Baldomero Sanín Cano's work has been recognized as a significant milestone in literary and artistic Colombian and Latin-American scene.Despite of this, there are few researches on his contribution to the discussion on plastic and visual arts in Colombia.The article discusses one of the recurrent Sanín Cano's topics: the differences between arts and, more precisely, between picture arts and word arts.In order to analyze this problem, the state of art related to Sanín Cano's essays is discussed.The article shows the role of arts classifications in aesthetic theory.Moreover, the article analyzes some Sanín Cano's texts in order to convey the role of the comparison between painting and poetry in his thesis about arts taxonomy.