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.
Architecture and design were basic components of the CAYC’s interdisciplinary approach. In its early years, the center became affiliated with the Fundación de Investigación Interdisciplinaria (Foundation for Interdisciplinary Research), an organization that included a group of dissident professors from the Facultad de Arquitectura y Ciencias Exactas at the Universidad de Buenos Aires following the forced occupation of universities, the violation of social and educational norms that took place after the coup d’état orchestrated by General Onganía in 1966. That earlier affiliation left an indelible mark on various aspects of the CAYC’s operations, such as its approach to many of its initiatives as “projects;” the use of heliographic copies in its exhibitions; the center’s collaboration with the industrial sector in exhibitions and contests; and the presence of several artist-architects among the founders of the Grupo de los Trece: Clorindo Testa, Jacques Bedel, and Luis Fernando Benedit.
Though the CAYC operated outside of official circuits there was, on this occasion, a mention of a partnering with the Technical-Scientific Cultural Overseas Cooperation Service at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Relations. It should be noted that this international connection occurred during the de facto military government that took power in Argentina following the coup d’état in March 1976.
In other editions of this newsletter (GT 662, GT-734; doc. no. 1478333), the deadline for the delivery of submissions was pushed back due to the heated nature of the sociopolitical climate at the time.
