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.
The year 1972 was pivotal in the establishment of systems art as an international promotional strategy for the CAYC. The exhibition’s May opening at the III Bienal de Arte Coltejer in Medellín, Colombia, launched it on a journey that took it to several cities in Latin America and Europe. (Regarding previous events, refer to the newsletters about the event staged at the Plaza Rubén Darío [GT- 8; doc. no. 1477957, GT-17; doc. no. 1477959] Escultura, follaje y ruidos, and [GT-166; doc.1477990, GT- 168; doc. no. 1476350] Arte e Ideología en CAYC al aire libre.) This newsletter announces the opening of the exhibition CAYC al aire libre. Arte e Ideología at Arte de sistemas II.
The exhibition Arte de Sistemas II (Buenos Aires, September 1972) was presented at three different venues: Arte de Sistemas Internacional (Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires), Arte de Sistemas Argentina (Centro de Arte y Comunicación), and CAYC al Aire Libre. Arte e Ideología (Plaza Roberto Arlt). There was also a performance of experimental music. The three exhibitions included a greater variety of trends and movements, which were mainly reflected in gestural, participatory, and ephemeral art, and strictly contemporary works of a political nature. This newsletter includes a list of participating artists, which omits Horacio Zabala, who nonetheless exhibited the installation 300 metros de cinta negra para enlutar una plaza pública.
The exhibition of works, which opened on September 23, 1972, echoed the social and political conditions of the times. The turbulent situation in Argentina and other Latin American countries under military and civilian dictatorships, and the chance to create art that demanded radical change, were on open display in public, in a city plaza. Consequently, two days after the opening, the exhibition was shut down and the works were confiscated by the police. The exhibition of art in the street defied the repressive limits imposed by the authoritarian government instated in 1966 after the coup by General Onganía.
