This article reconstructs the controversy that took place in the Third National Exhibition of Artists, 1942, around the artistic work The Annunciation by the painter Carlos Correa. In the first part, we consider the critical precepts that prevailed in Colombia in the first half of the twentieth century through the analysis of two articles: “Rudimentos de estética” (Rudiments of Aesthetics) (1920), by the presbyter Juan Crisóstomo García, and “Del expresionismo como síntoma de pereza e inhabilidad en el arte” (Expressionism as a Symptom of Laziness and Inability in Art) (1937), by the conservative leader Laureano Gómez. The second part reveals how these critical precepts kept operating at the beginning of the 1940s through the examination of a specific case that illustrates the controversial reception of the work indicated in the 1942 exhibition.