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.
Though Brazilian artists were seldom included in the center’s activities during its early years, the desire to create a distinctly Latin American style of art became one of the CAYC’s main goals in 1971. In Glusberg’s opinion, that sort of unity was not based on formal aspects but on the “common problems” the region’s countries shared. A great intermediary played a key role in facilitating this process: during this period, the CAYC forged links with Brazil thanks to the efforts of the Brazilian critic, curator, and art historian Aracy Amaral (b. 1930).
In the early 1970s one of CAYC’s links to Brazil was Angelo de Aquino (1945–2007), who started producing works that relied on photocopies, photo-performance, and mail art. He used the latter to develop a network through which to exchange works and ideas with artists in Asia, Australia, Canada, the United States, Latin America, and Europe. At that time, he was producing videos and films, and is therefore considered one of Brazil’s precursors in the use of those mediums.
