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.
The eagerness to create links between Latin American and Eastern European art was a key component in the CAYC’s somewhat politicized strategy for international exchange. The center advocated a “unity of strengths” among local art scenes in what were considered Third World countries that Glusberg saw as a form of art thatpart of the world scene but still addressed the specific problems the countries had in common.
1972 was a pivotal year at the start of the international campaign to promote systems art as a trend associated with the CAYC. In May the exhibition Arte de Sistemas began a tour of cities in Latin America (Medellín, Lima, Buenos Aires) and Europe (Pamplona, Brussels), with works by different artists presented at each stop. Material published by the CAYC was distributed to support each exhibition, providing important information about experimental art.
Works by several artists from Hungary were included in the edition of the Arte de Sistemas Internacional exhibition that was presented at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires. During his many trips to Eastern European countries, Glusberg made contact with artists, and especially art critics, in Hungary (László Beke and Janusz Bogucki) and Poland (Jan Swidziński and Andrzej Partum). That network of connections led to the organization of exhibitions of works from those countries at the CAYC, one of which was the Festival de la vanguardia húngara. Those links to countries in what was referred to as the Socialist Bloc had a significant impact on the CAYC’s international strategy by including works by “Third World” artists in a joint evolutionary undertaking that, as Glusberg said, had revolutionary potential and a tangible desire to change society. (Katarzyna Cytlak, “Hacia el arte latinoamericano globalizado,” Revista de Estudios Globales y Arte Contemporáneo, 2017–18.)
