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.
Osvaldo Romberg (1938–2019) started showing his work in the early 1960s and went on to take part in Experiencias 69, the famous exhibition at the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella. In August of that year his work was shown at Arte y Cibernética, the exhibition that was organized for the opening of the CAYC at the Galería Bonino (Buenos Aires). In 1970 Romberg began showing his Conceptual approach to the landscape and, in November 1972 he exhibited his “Conceptual landscapes” at the CAYC. The exhibition catalogue notes that “in his works, the artist takes a thoughtful look at the landscape in Tucumán, a direct, sociological observation expressed in images that represent his conception of the cultural face of a future society” (CAYC, Romberg, Buenos Aires, 1972). Glusberg, who authored the text, acknowledges Romberg’s ability to address local issues in an innovative language that manages to avoid sounding like folklore or an uncritical adherence to international trends.
Romberg relies on a typological, morphological approach to present his own reorganization of space. Elements of the visual arts (such as line and color) are combined with other analytical, objective, geometrical elements, like grids and scales that contain them. In this apparently rational classification, there are other relationships that resignify the information in the image. These landscapes are ancient pre-Hispanic ruins located in the Province of Tucumán, which although forgotten, act as a continual and present geological layer according to Romberg. In reclaiming these archeological sites, the artist refers to places and suggests taking a second look at the regional foundations for constructing a cultural and social identity.
Though not a member of the Grupo de los Trece, Romberg was at the CAYC’s earliest exhibitions and showed his work in various editions of Hacia un perfil del arte latinomericano beginning in 1972. At the same time, on the international stage, artists in the Land art movement were presenting similar ideas.
