This paper is about the colombian thinker Nicolás Gómez Dávila (1913-94), his idea of art as a form of truth, and its expression through the aphorism. The ancient-greek concept aletheia returns in Gómez Dávila’s artistic conception and, together with the the colombian’s disenchanted vision of the world, acquires the feature of presence-absence that in ancient greek philosphy had already been identified as constitutives features of the very philosphical investigation. Art, concretely, comes to life in this author through the aphorism, a stylistic form which, as an artistic representation, aims to evoke more than to explain, without resulting, nevertheless, not authentic.