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.
After Sol Lewitt had exhibited his works at group shows at the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella (1967) and the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Buenos Aires (1968), the CAYC organized this solo show of his work in the city of La Plata in May 1973. A prominent figure in the field of Conceptual art and minimalism, Lewitt had, since the start of his career, focused on producing “books,” using drawings and publications as supports and an alternative means of distribution for his creative output.
The many versions of Serial Project show Lewitt’s Conceptual work in an almost infinite sequence of variations for constructive sketches in which he presents “the system” so viewers or readers can interpret the sequential rule that complements the structure. In the mid-1960s, in Buenos Aires, there was a presentation—directly related to minimalism—of Primary Structures.
The artists working in the field of geometric abstraction used an industrial type of modular elements and minimally complex forms, thus eliminating any “visual anecdote.” In 1967 a series of exhibitions marked the legitimization of Primary Structures at the institutions that were part of the Argentinean modernizing circuit. One of them was La visión elemental (at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes) that included the work of artists in La Plata who were interested in that form of expression; another was Estructuras Primarias II (at the Sociedad Hebraica). The latter event, which was organized by Glusberg, was presented as a second part of Primary Structures, which took place at the Jewish Museum in New York in 1967 and included works by Lewitt. The following year, Lewitt’s exhibition was presented in the Argentinean city of La Plata at the Centro Cultural Platense, (GT-218; doc. no. 1476431).
