Marta Traba

Marta Traba Taín (Buenos Aires, 25 January 1930 – Madrid, 27 November 1983) was an art critic and writer known for her contributions to Latin American art and literature.

Biography Traba's parents were Catalan immigrants, Francisco Traba and Marta Taín. She studied Letters at the University of Buenos Aires. Upon graduation she worked at the arts review journal Ver y Estimar ('Look and Consider'), under the editorship of the art critic Jorge Romero Brest.

From 1948 to 1950, Traba lived in Paris and took art history classes at La Sorbonne and the School of the Louvre. In Paris, she met her first husband, the Colombian journalist Alberto Zalamea, with whom she had two children, Gustavo and Fernando. In 1954, after a period in Italy and Argentina, the couple settled in Bogotá, Colombia. There, Traba taught art history at various universities, participated in television programs about art, and wrote art criticism for popular publications such as El Tiempo, Estampa, and Semana. She became a celebrity and one of the leading authorities in contemporary art in Colombia. on 27 November 1983 when Avianca Flight 011 crashed near Madrid-Barajas airport. They were on the plane on their way to Colombia.

Publications Traba published more than 20 books and around 1,000 articles about art. In 1958, she published El museo vacío, a book concerning modern art in which she adopted aesthetic notions by Benedetto Croce and Wilhelm Worringer. Traba also published numerous provocative essays about Latin American art: La pintura nueva en Latinoamérica (1961), Dos décadas vulnerables en las artes plásticas latinoamericanas (1950–1970) (1973), and Arte de América Latina 1900–1980. She also supported with her writings the work of numerous Colombian artists such as Alejandro Obregón, Fernando Botero, Leopoldo Richter (1896-1984), , Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar, , Edgar Negret, Feliza Bursztyn and .

In 1966, Traba began to publish novels. Her first novel Las ceremonias del verano (1966) received a prestigious award from the Casa de las Americas in Cuba. Amongst her other novels are Conversación al sur (1981) (English version: Mothers and Shadows, translated by Jo Labanyi) which details the struggles of two women during the Dirty War in Argentina.