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.
Edgardo Antonio Vigo (1928–1997) was a prolific artist. He began in the field of concrete art, then went on to produce objects, prints, signs, mail art, and visual poetry. He started the magazines Diagonal Cero (1961) and Hexágono `71 (1971), both of which were considered to be artists’ books of a kind. In 1969 he organized the Expo/Internacional de Novísima Poesía/69 at the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, which featured a range of works, from visual poetry to electronic media for sound poetry, by experimental artists from all over the world. This exhibition was a forerunner to the one presented at the CAYC in June 1971. (For more information about the Expo Internacional de Proposiciones a realizar. Investigaciones poéticas, see GT-49 [doc. no. 1476289].)
Vigo was a regular contributor to the CAYC from 1968 to 1973. He found the center to be compatible with his own discourse and art actions, including a keenness to experiment and ideological convictions concerning the struggle for political and economic liberation in Latin American countries. In 1970 he was one of three artists invited to De la Figuración al Arte de Sistemas (doc. no. 761141), an exhibition that the CAYC presented at the Museo Emilio Caraffa, in the city of Córdoba where, for the first time, at least in Argentina, the category of “systems art” was mentioned. The concept of “systems” had actually been used before in art circles in the city of La Plata, where Vigo was from. But when the Grupo de los Trece was formed in 1971, as part of the center and as encouraged by Glusgerg, Vigo did not join. He was nonetheless involved with the group while remaining independent, and they enjoyed a relationship based on mutual collaboration: his magazine reported on the CAYC’s activities and artists, and the group invited him to their exhibitions and discussion forums.
In this article, Vigo discusses the category of “systems art” in relation to the works produced by the members of the Grupo de los Trece, using the term in the sense that Glusberg did, quoting the French writer, curator, and critic Catherine Millet (b. 1948) to argue that “Conceptual art” is not necessarily defined by having dispensed with the object. (Catherine Millet, “L’art conceptuel comme semiotique de l’art,” VH-101, no. 3, [Fall 1970].) He was thus agreeing with the Spanish theorist Simón Marchán Fiz who, a short time later, described Latin American Conceptualism as “ideological” and said that “it does not dispense with the object.” (Simón Marchán Fiz, Del arte objetual al arte de concepto: las artes plásticas desde 1960, 1974.) Taking this approach, Vigo divides the group’s works into those that are most closely related to “the object” (which rely on the support of a text) and those that do not fit in either category. It should be noted that Hebe Conte is listed as an unofficial member of the group.
This article was written for the Grupo de los Trece’s exhibition, El grupo de los trece en arte de sistemas, which opened at the CAYC in December 1972 (GT-195; doc. no. 1476367, Gt-214-A; pending). In the text, Vigo shows how his theoretical contribution helped consolidate the specificity of Latin American Conceptualism. The article was originally published in this newsletter, but his name was omitted. It was also published in the “cd” issue of Hexágono ´71.
