mainly portrait, for about four years. The classes focused on the drawing of plaster figures and still lifes. But the artist got bored with the academic routine and got permission to go out and paint the different urban scenes outside. In these works done in watercolor, the atmosphere of the city is very well reflected in the modernization process, marked by the tram, cars and people. Maestro Pedro Nel Gómez returned to Medellín after studying in Italy, and by 1935 he started the frescoes of the Municipal Palace. Débora communicated with him to admit her as a disciple in his workshop; there she felt more at ease and identified with his concepts and his more expressive technique; from him she learned the dynamics of form, the vitality of movement and coloring. She practiced especially watercolor, technique with which she represented urban motifs, still-lifes, animals and human figure. Social recognition (1939-1944) In November 1939 she was invited by the Society of Friends of Art to participate in the "Salon of Professional Artists" in Club Unión, the most prestigious social center in Medellin. She was then 31 years old and a few weeks before the Second World War had begun.The jury decided to award the first prize to Débora. The reward of one hundred pesos was given for the picture Sisters of Charity (also known as Sisters of the Presentation). The choice of this work was made as a way to appease the possible scandal that would be rewarded if one of the two nudes to the watercolor that also presented the artist, named "Cantarina de la Rosa" and "La Amiga". Despite the controversy over the nudes exhibited in the Union Club was immediate. On the one hand, the more traditional artists such as Eladio Vélez. On the other hand, the nudes were judged as scandalous by social sectors whose voices were taken by the local conservative press, as is the case of the newspaper La Defensa, which commented: "... an impudent work that not even a man should exhibit ...". Little by little, the episode acquired political overtones and the liberal press assumed the defense of someone whom it saw as a brave woman. In the midst of the scandal, Débora Arango expressed a concept without antecedents in the national artistic milieu, today much cited about her painting: "art, as a manifestation of culture, has nothing to do with moral codes.