Ever since it was founded, the CAYC (Centro de Arte y Comunicación), helmed by the cultural promoter, artist, and businessman Jorge Glusberg, was intended as an interdisciplinary space where an experimental art movement could flourish. The establishment of collaborative networks connecting local and international artists and critics played a key role in this process. The exhibitions shone a light on these exchanges, in which overviews of trends or individual artists introduced the innovations of international contemporary art and made Argentine and Latin American artists better known on the global scene.
1972 was a pivotal year in the establishment of “arte de sistemas” as the CAYC’s institutional promotional strategy. After opening in May at the III Bienal de Arte Coltejer, in Medellín (Colombia), the exhibition set off on a lengthy journey that took it to a number of Latin American and European cities. [For information about previous events, see the newsletters that address the one organized at the Plaza Rubén Darío: GT- 8, Escultura, follaje y ruidos (doc. no. 747623), and GT-166, Arte e Ideología en CAYC al aire libre (doc. no. pending)]. This newsletter announces the opening of the exhibition CAYC al aire libre. Arte e Ideología as part of Arte de Sistemas II.
The exhibition Arte de Sistemas II (Buenos Aires, September 1972) was split into three events that were presented at three different locations: Arte de Sistemas Internacional (Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires), Arte de Sistemas Argentina (Centro de Arte y Comunicación), and CAYC al Aire Libre. Arte e Ideología (Plaza Roberto Arlt), as well as a performance of experimental music. Having three separate exhibtions meant that a great variety of styles was presented; most notable among them was a plethora of gestural, participative, ephemeral works characterized by a distinctly current and political approach.
This newsletter includes a document that was not often seen in those days: the floor plan for the exhibition in the plaza that shows the names of the participating artists and the location of each one’s submission. The text does not include a reference to the group work La realidad subterránea, since it was a spontaneous contribution; nor is there a mention of the enormous inflatable balloon, presented by Juan Carlos Romero, that was floated above the plaza, inscribed with the slang words: “Forfai/Canguela/Falante/Metedor/Garaba/Bronca” (“no money/fear/hunger/tenacity/lover/fight”).
The selection of works in this exhibition that opened on September 23, 1972, reflected some of the social and political situations the country was dealing with at the time. The turbulent conditions in Argentina and other Latin America countries under military and civilian dictatorships were addressed by artists seeking social change who showed their works in the public arena of the plaza. Two days after the event opened, it was shut down by the police and the works were confiscated. Art in the street thus challenged the repressive limits imposed by the authoritarian regime that took power in 1966 after the coup d’état orchestrated by General Onganía.
