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 desire to forge close ties between Latin American and Eastern European artists was a basic, somewhat political, component of the CAYC’s strategy for international exchange. The center advocated “joining forces” with art scenes in what were considered Third World countries, which, in Glusberg’s view, would lead to the creation of art that was in synch with the world scene and reflected the problems these countries had in common.
After meeting the theater director and avant-garde Jerzy Grotowski—whose stage workshop inspired the name Grupo de los Trece (GT-94; doc. no. to be determined)—the CAYC, with the support of the Polish Embassy in Argentina, organized exhibitions that emphasized the experimental nature of Polish artists (GT-100; doc. no. 1476356, GT-270; doc. no. 1476487, GT- 674; doc. no. 1477402, GT-727; doc. no. pending).
Tomek Kawiak (“Kava,” b. 1943), the painter, sculptor, and creator of many art actions in the Polish avant-garde, was also actively involved in the international mail art network. In 1970 he produced La Douleur de Tomek (Thomas’ Pain), the first ecological and social action undertaken in Poland under the country’s communist regime. As an act of protest, Kawiak bandaged the crowns of trees that had been “brutally” pruned a few days earlier by municipal employees in Warsaw as part of a project to take care of the city’s trees. A simple action, but a highly suggestive one, given the censorship in effect at the time.
The authoritarian climate in the country led Kava to emigrate to Paris, where he joined the international network of artists working in the experimental field. He took part in Prospectiva 74, a key exhibition organized by the MAC-USP in São Paulo in February 1974, overseen by the professor and director Walter Zanini. Works were sent to the event by mail from all over the world, in some cases from countries under repressive regimes, as Brazil was at the time (1964–85). Kava presented his screenprinted work Célébration du pain (Celebration of the [Daily] Bread) and reproductions of Certificado de Intercambio that was part of the action Operación Intercambio.
He also took part in Video, the exhibition jointly organized by the CAYC and the Galería Wspolczesna in Warsaw in May 1975. This newsletter includes a work by Kawiak in which, with the repetitive use of a self-portrait, he suggests a graphic language that relies on humor.