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 an important role in this process. The exhibitions shone a light on these exchanges, in which overviews of trends or individual artists provided an introduction to the innovations of international contemporary art and made Argentine and Latin American artists better known on the global scene.
In the new, progressive scene that blossomed following Salvador Allende’s election as president in 1970, Chile seemed (especially from a Latin American perspective) to be an ideal spot for a reciprocal exchange of works back and forth across the Andes mountains. Under the new government, socialist artists and intellectuals sought to show their works beyond the confines of traditional art and cultural circuits and connect with hitherto inaccessible sections of the population. Chile’s mural brigades took to the streets and painted murals that expressed the political changes proposed by the government of the Unidad Popular party.
As part of its promotional efforts for the opening of Homenaje a Salvador Allende (see GT-285 [doc. no. 1476428]) the CAYC produced this newsletter, which includes reproductions of two murals: one was created by the Brigada Ramona Parra, the other by workers from a cement factory in Melones. The newsletter also announces the performance, in solidarity with the Chilean people, of Amelita Baltar, who will sing Violetas Populares, the tango composed by Astor Piazzolla, the innovative tango composer (and classical scholar), and Mario Trejo, the avant-garde poet and playwright. Piazzolla was influenced by the revolutionary mood in the early 1970s; he worked on the renewal of music and collaborated with several lyricists to compose a number of tangos that questioned the social status quo: El Pueblo Joven, Pequeña canción para Matilde (with lyrics by the late poet Pablo Neruda, as requested by his widow Matilde Urrutia), and a project with the author of Los pájaros perdidos, Mario Trejo, with whom he composed the tango, referred to above, dedicated to Violeta Parra and the revolutionary dream.
