In 1958 he led a modern literary and cultural movement known as Nadaism (Nothing-ism),[1][2] inspired by surrealism, French existentialism, beat generation, dadaism, and influenced by the Colombian writer and philosopher Fernando González Ochoa.

[3] Those contrasts can be observed between the Primer manifiesto nadaísta (1958), or Prosas para leer en la silla eléctrica (1965), and his last writings.

[6] Gonzalo Arango was born in Andes, a town of the Antioquian South-Eastern region in 1931, in a period known in Colombia as the liberal government that had to face the Great Depression.

When he was an adolescent he saw the falling of the country into a bloody fight between the two traditional political parties, after El Bogotazo of April 9, 1948, a period of violent civil wars that was triggered by the murder of the presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán.

The Catholic Church in Colombia possessed the control of education, following the Colombian Constitution of 1886, and exerted a great authority over political, cultural and social matters, such as in the censorship of all intellectual material produced in the nation.

He utterly disliked what he saw: the young poet thin and yellow, the pile of acid bones bitterly hairless, giving himself to write a novel.

[7]Gonzalo Arango ventures into different genres: autobiography, prose of ideas, literary criticism, comments, essays, prologues, letters, journalism, poetry, diverse narrative works, theater, chronicles, profiles, memories, notes, and reports.

Nadaísmo was Gonzalo Arango's creation and inspiration, and his goal was "not leaving intact any faith or any idol in place," according to the Primer Manifiesto nadaísta.

The Movement was deeply entrenched in the 1960s and attracted young talented writers, painters, and artists of the time who created a strong mouvement in Colombia, with new poetry, novels, short stories, theatre, painting, drawing, publicity and journalism.

It was thought by its own founder as ended, at the beginning of the 1970s, but was vigorously continued by other nadaist writers, as the poet Eduardo Escobar, even until modern times.