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.
As explained in the text signed by Irma Arestizábal (1940–2009), the Argentinean curator of 20 artistas brasileños, the exhibition was conceived as an opportunity to present an overview of the work being produced by artists in Brazil through their prints. Most of these artists were showing their work at the CAYC for the first time. Regina Vater (GT-539; doc. no. 1476855), Julio Plaza (GT- 525; doc. no. 1476852, GT-530; doc. no. 1476853), and Regina Silveira (GT-526; doc. no. 1476849, GT-531; doc. no. 1476854) however, had already had solo shows at the CAYC, and continued to take part in the center’s subsequent group exhibitions.
Arestizábal was an art historian who specialized in contemporary Latin American art. She was the curator of the temporary exhibitions department at the Museu de Arte Moderna in Río de Janeiro from 1975 to 1977. From then until 1982 she was the director of the Instituto Cultural Brasil Argentina, also in Rio de Janeiro. In 1984 she returned to the MAM as curator of the pedagogical department and, finally, of the permanent collection. She returned to Argentina in the early 1990s, where she won a competition and was selected to be the director of the Museo de la Casa Rosada, the office of the president of Argentina. She was a member of the advisory commission charged with assembling the art collection for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 2002, in Rome, she was appointed head of the Cultural Department of the Instituto Ítalo-Latino Americano, for which she curated the Latin American pavilion at the Venice Biennale (in 2003, 2005, and 2007). She was a member of the Argentinean section of the Asociación Internacional de Críticos de Arte (AICA), of which Glusberg was vice-president.
