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.
Norberto Cresta (1929–2009), the Argentinean artist and designer, was born in the province of Santa Fe. After completing his training as an artist in Córdoba, he founded the Grupo 6 there in 1953. In the late 1950s he moved to Brazil and, from then on, he split his time between Germany, Italy, Switzerland, the United States, and Ecuador. When he returned to Argentina in 1971, he made his home in Villa Allende, in the province of Córdoba. In 1973 he was hired by the Renault automotive firm to create its Art and Communication Department in Argentina. At that time, he was also working as a teacher and an artistic technical advisor at the Ministry of Education and Culture in Córdoba. His work was strictly geometric with solid, striking colors, clearly defined borders, and no evident brushwork. It was therefore quite different from the sort of works endorsed by the CAYC, which were usually of an experimental nature. The CAYC’s relative flexibility in this case can be understood both in the context of the changing trends in international art circles, and the tense situation in Argentina since the coup d’état in March 1976.