At the time of his second individual exhibition, the Catalan painter, Vicente Rojo (b. 1932), had already been living in Mexico for ten years. At that time, Spanish artists could count on the special preference of their compatriot, Margarita Nelken (1896-1968). However, her criticism of the previous exhibition of the painter from Barcelona had been negative. That exhibition had featured figurative work and Nelken found it too closely bound to the work of Rojo’s teacher, Arturo Souto, who was also Spanish. While Rojo’s new works lean much more toward abstraction, to Nelken, they are distinctive as truly "skilled compositions . . . with a personal, refined sensitivity," works that contain a "subterranean motif." Three years later, the Barcelona painter/editor would show works at the same gallery that were almost totally abstract. This time, the critic would end up rejecting his aesthetic stance, which she would categorize as a "simple instrument," without any other artistic connotation. Nevertheless, Nelken would perceive the suggestions of his surfaces, as few of her colleagues would be able to do. The possibility of an absolute removal from external reality or its verbal equivalent in modern visual art presented an insuperable obstacle for many critics in Mexico upon their first exposure to abstract artwork. To accept this work would mean accepting the autonomy of the art work. Such resistance was common and recurrent in Mexico, at least in the 1950s.