This document, published in March 1976, was the second and final issue of Buzón de Arte/Arte de Buzón, the Venezuelan (tabloid) bilingual (English-Spanish) magazine edited and managed by Diego Barboza (1945–2003). The first issue was published in January of that same year. In the editorial essay in the second issue, Barboza explains that the magazine will introduce new artists and announce performances and events appearing on the international stage. He mentions that the countries listed are not necessarily the native homeland of the artists in question; they are just the countries where the artists happened to be living at the time they put their piece of art in the mail.
Participants in the second issue of the magazine were: from Venezuela Edwin Villasmil, Luis García, Roberto Obregón, the Universidad Experimental Simón Bolívar, and Barboza; and from elsewhere Leonhard Frank Duch, Gastão de Magalhães and Paulo Bruscky (Brazil); Opal Nations (Canada); Guillermo Deisler (Bulgaria); Bill Gaglione, Anna Banana, Dick Higgins, and Irene Dogmatic (USA); Clemente Padín and Jorge Caraballo (Uruguay); Hervé Fischer (France); Edgardo Antonio Vigo, Luis Iurcovich and Horacio Zabala (Argentina); Robert Rehfeldt (Germany); Julien Blaine (France); Jonier Marín and Álvaro Barrios (Colombia); Galería Milan Art Center and Michelle Perfetti (Italy). Each piece is signed and bears the artist’s address, an essential feature in works of this nature.
Buzón de Arte/Arte de Buzón is of undeniable importance because it is an anthological document—in conceptual, visual, and graphic terms—that represents the glory days of “mail art.” Among the opinion pieces in the second issue, the one by Vigo, from Argentina, stands out from the rest; it is the longest of the three, and explains how important the movement was in a political sense in the mid-1970s. Vigo—a key figure in mail art circles—used it as a form of resistance to the military dictatorship that took power in Argentina after the coup in 1976.
[For additional information on this subject, see in the ICAA digital archive the essay published in the 1st issue of the magazine Buzón de Arte/ Arte de Buzón (Caracas, January, 1976) by Edgardo Antonio Vigo and Horacio Zabala “Arte-correo una nueva forma de expresión” (doc. no. 1154763); and the review by Diego Barboza “La caja del cachicamo” (doc. no. 1154747). See also, published in the 2nd issue of the magazine, the essay written by Edgardo Antonio Vigo “Arte-correo: una nueva etapa en el proceso revolucionario de la creación” (doc. no. 1102031)].
