Published in Mito magazine(1955-1962)— a review instrumental to the development of the visual arts in Colombia—this editorial is likely to have caused a stir amongst Colombian critics for describing the solo shows of Colombian artist Cecilia Porras (1920-1971), Catalan artist Alejandro Obregón (1920-1992), and Valencian artist Juan Antonio Roda (1921-2003) as the “best of the year” for 1956. Obregón is praised as the “most talented Colombian painter ever;” Porras is said to have “an entirely visual mentality;” and Roda “effects a difficult synthesis” between composition and detail.
One of the primary missions of Mito (1955-62) was to announce literary, musical, and artistic events taking place in Bogotá at the time. Though it was never a mass publication (the magazine seems to have been written for experts in what at that time was called “high culture”), it was an immediate success amongst a select circle of poets, critics, and artists from what was called the “South American Athens” of the fifties and even amongst a broader international Spanish-speaking community. In 1955, Colombian writers like Gabriel García Márquez, Eduardo Zalamea, Belisario Betancur, Héctor Rojas Herazo, and Jorge Child wrote positive articles about Mito for the newspapers El tiempo and El espectador, the magazines Prometeo, and other Colombian and foreign publications. Similarly, Spanish poet Vicente Aleixandre, Chilean Ricardo Latcham, Mexicans Octavio Paz and Alfonso Reyes, and Uruguayan Ángel Rama also praised the magazine whose forty-two issues were discussed in Colombia and beyond.
Though Mito’s readership was small, from the beginning it gave rise to an intellectual community interested in its overriding vision as well as the news, comments, and criticism it published.