Gonzalo Arango

Who was Gonzalo Arango?

Gonzalo Arango Arias was a Colombian poet, journalist and philosopher. During a repressive phase of government in the 1940s he led a literary movement known as Nadaismo. He and other young Colombian thinkers of his generation in the movement were inspired by the Colombian philosopher Fernando González Ochoa.

Arango's life was characterized by large contrasts from an open atheism to an intense spirituality, and a strong criticism of the society of his time. Those contrasts can be read in the First Manifesto of Nadaísmo as "The artist is considered sometimes a symbol fluctuation between holiness and madness". Arango died in a tragic car accident in the city of Tocancipá in 1976 when he was planning to move to London so that "by losing me, Colombians win me".