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.
The Seventies was originally conceived as a traveling exhibition (GT-500; doc. no. pending); as Glusberg explained: “the idea is to show—in as many places as possible—what is being done in the field of art in this decade…using a low-cost medium to present works that are not original but were easy to reproduce.” The heliographic stamp allowed artists from all over the world to take part, as had happened on a previous occasion for Hacia un perfil del arte latinoamericano (1972) (GT-129; doc. no. 1476310).
The version of The Seventies shown in São Paulo was presented at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo (MAC-USP), from August 8 to September 5, 1976. The heliographic prints arrived at the exhibition site (at what was the university campus at that time) by mail.
During the 1970s Glusberg created a network of South American and international institutions that were interested in, or directly involved in, experimental practices, with which he shared similar programs. The goal was to encourage the production and exhibition of conceptual works within a particular context that was marked by the violence of dictatorships, specifically in the Southern Cone. The MAC-USP, directed by the art critic and cultural agent Walter Zanini (1925–2013), was one of those institutions. Glusberg and Zanini helped consolidate the expansion of “a transnational dialogical territory,” promoting initiatives such as the exchange of regional and international artists and organizing exhibitions and discussions. (Luiza Mader Paladino, “Intercâmbios institucionais: a trajetória de Jorge Glusberg no Brasil,” Caiana, no. 9, 2016.)
