Walter Zanini asserts that Mail art is one of the most widespread international avant-garde art forms. It is characterized by the casting aside of the object and downplaying the anonymity of contemporary art. Zanini points out that new structures and forms of communication favor artists in many countries around the world by means of publications and exhibitions, making way for a relationship in space and time that does not revolve around individual creators and receivers of messages but instead involves larger groups. Since Mail art is a form of Conceptual art, its syntactic elements are much less important than the relentless flow of semantic information it transmits. In Zanini’s view, Mail art is somewhat anarchic; its tendency is toward synthesis, irreverence, and humor. On a conceptual level, Mail art breaks barriers between art and life. It undermines the traditional concept of the work of art and serves to organize the autonomy of an independent mechanism. Zanini mentions early exponents of Mail art in Brazil and the world at large. He also comments on the key role played by the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo—which he directed—in supporting Mail art.

Critic, curator, and art historian Walter Zanini (1925–2013) was the first director of the Museu de Arte Contemporânea (a part of the USP). From that post, which he held from 1963 to 1978, he encouraged the production of emerging artists and supported marginalized forms of artistic expression, from technological and conceptual efforts to multimedia works that made use of visual poetics. Zanini was one of the curators of the first Bienal de São Paulo (1951), and was a professor at the Escola de Comunicações e Artes da Universidade de São Paulo (ECA-USP). In an interview-testimony [see doc. no. 1111244], Zanini discusses the role he played during his tenure as the director of the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo (MAC-USP) in furthering artistic expression that engaged new media modes of communication. Even during a period marked by authoritarianism and censorship at the hand of the military dictatorship (1964–85), in Zanini’s view, the museum was a place of freedom where experimental works that made use of the new media (experimental art, multimedia, and in this case, Mail art) were able to have an impact. In an international context marked by the dictatorship of Pinochet in Chile, artist Eugenio Dittborn, who was Chilean, gained considerable recognition around the world. Zanini considers work known internationally as Mail art a particularly promising tendency in emerging art. Mail art was featured in early shows such as Prospectiva ‘74 (1974)—[doc. no. 1110588]—and Multi Media I e II (1976), held at the museum during Zanini’s tenure as director. Those events would later become points of reference for exhibitions like Poéticas Visuais (1977) —[doc. no. 1110585]—and Multimedia Internacional (1979), which was held at the ECA-USP. Both exhibitions featured the work of multimedia artist, printmaker, and professor Julio Plaza (1938−2003).