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 a key role in this process. The exhibitions shone a light on these exchanges, in which overviews of trends or individual artists introduced the innovations of international contemporary art and made Argentine and Latin American artists better known on the global scene.
The desire to forge close ties between Latin American and Eastern European artists was a basic component of the CAYC’s strategy for international exchange. The Buenos Aires-based Center’s artistic and cultural goals relied on the idea of a “joining of forces” between art scenes in what were considered Third World countries, something that, in Glusberg’s view, would lead to the creation of experimental art that reflected the problems these countries had in common.
The organization of this exhibition of Czech printmakers and the collaboration with the Narodni Galerie in what was then the Czech capital can be seen as a creative attempt by Glusberg to strengthen ties with countries in the socialist bloc, as he had done with experimental photography in Poland [see GT-101 (doc. no. 1476357)]. It was an important decision in the context of the Cold War, when the Theory of Dependence was being introduced in Latin America, which explained the poverty of those countries under the oppression of the imperial forces of the great world powers.
This article in the newsletter announces the opening of the exhibition and provides an overview of the history of printmaking in the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia. The author identifies local traits and rejects an international kind of modern art that he considers to be “increasingly more universal.” He mentions the more experimental explorations as well as those that continue to use traditional techniques.
