In 1937, Arango participated in her first exhibition with other apprentices of Master Pedro Nel Gómez, and in 1939 she exhibited nine paintings and watercolors in the Exhibition of Professional Artists that took place in Club La Unión in Medellín. When she won the first prize, she became strongly controversial as the first woman to include two nudes within her selection. Cantarina Rosa and The Friend (La amiga) were considered "impudent works that not even a man should exhibit." Through these and other events, the artist asserted herself as a revolutionary for her time: "Art has nothing to do with morality: a nude is nothing but nature undisguised [...] it is a landscape of human flesh [...] it may not be beautiful, but it is natural, it is human, it is real, with its all its defects and deficiencies.”[1] The moon, however, is not so big.[2]

  1. E. Miller, The Sun, (New York: Academic Press, 2005), 23-5.
  2. R. Smith, "Size of the Moon," Scientific American, 46 (April 1978), 44-6.