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.
Though few Brazilian artists were involved in the CAYC’s activities in its early years, the consolidation of a regional form of Latin American art had become one of the center’s main goals by 1971. In Glusberg’s view, a union of that kind was not based on formal aspects but on “shared problems.” The expansion of a “transnational dialogic territory” came about thanks to the efforts of the Brazilian critic, curator, and art historian Aracy Amaral (b. 1930) and Walter Zanini (1925–2013), the critic, agent, and director of the MAC-USP (Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo), with whom the CAYC organized a number of initiatives, including exchange programs for regional and international artists, exhibitions, and seminars. (Luiza Mader Paladino, Caiana, 2016.)
Vera Chaves Barcellos (b. 1938), the Brazilian artist and educator, became active in the local cultural scene in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul in the 1970s. She was one of the founders of the Grupo Nervo Óptico (1976–78)—together with Carlos Asp, Carlos Pasquetti, Clóvis Dariano, Mara Alvares, and Telmo Lanes—and the Espaço NO. (1979–82). Her art explored somatic connections with nature and time; she used the human body to produce prints, videos, photographs, and installations. In 1975 she embraced photography as her medium of choice, using reproduction and its variants as an important tool in challenging the nature of the image.
This newsletter published excerpts of her work Testarte (1976), which consisted of photographs and a batch of texts that were written by the artist and participating viewers who were invited to express what they saw in her images. Involving the public in her work helped show how viewers perceived the images. This work was presented at the 37th Venice Biennale (1976) and at the XIV São Paulo Biennial (1977). At the latter, it was placed in the “Uncatalogued Art” section where the Grupo de los Trece’s submission was installed.
