This article includes comments by writers, poets, dramatists, and designers who were involved with CAL, the magazine published in Caracas, devoted to art criticism, art, and literature, which appeared from 1962 through 1967. These comments address the circumstances surrounding the emergence of the magazine with regard to aspirations, expectations, and the prevailing socio-cultural mood of the time. There are discussions about the magazine’s performance as compared to other similar publications, and about how cultural ideas were changing. Those interviewed agree on the fundamental role that Guillermo Meneses played in the project, and on the financing of the Fundación Neumann. The magazine is reviewed as an avant-garde movement and in terms of the impact its innovations had in the field of graphic design.  

In addition to its review from a historical perspective, the catalogue for the exhibition CAL: la última vanguardia (Caracas: Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas Sofía Imber, 1996) includes valuable comments made by those who were involved in that important editorial initiative. CAL (1962–67), the magazine devoted to art criticism, art, and literature, is an example of the integration of the arts. Those who are quoted claim that, while plurality and differences of opinion were the hallmark of the 1960s, CAL’s virtue lay in its ability to bring together different trends and movements in an avant-garde project that did not subscribe to any of them. Far from responding to an aesthetic or “official” discourse, CAL was part of the motley opposition to the system, providing it with a voice and a visual form of expression. Its distance from the establishment and catalyzing effect on the plurality of voices captured and conveyed the experience of an incipient democratic process that encouraged creative expression and freedom, even in its most visceral criticism. Nedo [Mion Ferrario] (1926–2001) was the magazine’s artistic director, and his work was remarkable in terms of what it revealed about the editorial process (which he admits was somewhat improvised) and the free associations that helped to make CAL a landmark in the history of Venezuelan graphic design. Allowing photographs to dictate the arrangement of text was part of an exploration of new fields of artistic expression; as new problems arose, new graphic solutions were created. CAL’s policy of integration thus heralded a broad new approach to the idea of “culture” that was directly related to the literary and journalistic priorities of the magazine’s founders. 

[To read other articles and statements that were written by various authors and published in CAL magazine, see in the ICAA digital archive “Arte, vanguardia y nuevas figuras” (doc. no. 1169254); “El diseño” (doc. no. 1169217); and “CAL: Crítica, arte, literatura” (doc. no. 1169078)].