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.
Luis Pazos (b. 1940) first started working in the fields of poetry and journalism. In the late 1960s he joined the Movimiento Diagonal Cero, headed by Edgardo Antonio Vigo (1928–1997), who introduced him to the practice of experimental art. Pazos started taking part in the CAYC’s activities in 1971; he joined the original Grupo de los Trece the following year.
This newsletter includes El Grupo de los Trece. Bienal de San Pablo, the article written by Glusberg and published immediately after the Buenos Aires based group’s prizewinning presentation at the biennial in Brazil. The large, thematically consistent installation for which Glusberg acted as curator, critic, and artist included individual works whose aesthetic had long identified the CAYC, on this occasion under the title Signos en ecosistemas artificiales.
In the 800 square meters assigned to them on the second floor of the biennial’s pavilion (Parque do Ibirapuera), in the section devoted to Uncatalogued Art, the CAYC members’ works were installed as part of a group presentation. According to Glusberg’s semiotic approach, the distinction between “natural” and “artificial” did not apply in this case because (for man) all objects are signs. The critic sought to express the discursive-space concept in which each work functioned as a supportive component that contributed to the overall narrative.
“Art Action” was how the São Paulo Biennial classified Arte como forma de vida (1977), the work by Pazos, which portrayed a vegetable garden, appropriately enough for the artist who spoke to visitors to the event about the fertility of Latin American soil and about the value of agricultural work functioning as an environmental model.
For the first time, the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Relations’ Grande Prêmio Itamaraty was awarded to a representative of Latin America. The presentation at the São Paulo Biennial recognized both the CAYC and the group for their submission and granted the CAYC a level of international prestige that far exceeded all the acknowledgements it had received up to that point in time. In the months prior to the group’s joint participation in the XIV São Paulo Biennial, the CAYC organized solo exhibitions for some of the members of the Grupo de los Trece and promoted their works in its newsletters. (See 737 [doc. no. 1477389], GT-738 [doc. no. 1477390], GT-746 [doc. no. 1477396], GT-757 [doc. no. 1477397], GT-758 [doc. no. 1477398], GT-759 [doc. no. 1477399], GT-761 [doc. no. 1477419], GT-765 [doc. no. 1477432], GT-766 [doc. no. 1477433], GT-772 [doc. no. 1477435], GT-773 [doc. no. 1477436], GT-774-775 [doc. no. 1477437], GT-787 and GT-788 [doc. no. 1477450], GT-789 and 790 [doc. no. 1477452], GT-791-793 [doc. no. 1477454], GT-794-796 [doc. no. 1477457], GT-797-798 [doc. no. 1477460], GT-799 [doc. no. 1477462], and GT-800-801 [doc. no. 1477463].)
