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. In addition to the exhibitions, a program of different activities exposed attendees to the latest in art and scientific thinking. According to Glusberg, the coordination between theoretical thinking and artistic practice was an essential part of social change.
The CAYC had always wanted to develop strong ties to the international art milieu. To celebrate the opening of their headquarters in Buenos Aires, they organized an auction of works donated by artists that would attract foreign critics such as Jasia Reichardt, deputy director of the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) London; Charles Spencer, director of the Camden Art Centre; Willoughby Sharp; and Charles Harrison. This initiative launched a period of transnational exchanges that lasted for much of the 1970s. This newsletter announces the visit of Guy Brett (1942–2021), the English curator and critic for The Times of London who, over the course of his career, explored poetic intersections between art and science.
In 1964 Brett—and the curator Paul Keeler; the multifaceted German artist Gustav Metzger (1926–2017); the Filipino biokinetic sculptor David Medalla (1942–2020); and Marcello Salvadori, promoter of self-destructive art—founded Signals. The gallery became a focal point for avant-garde art in London, connecting the artistic nt (new trends) from Latin American and Europe. The gallery closed in 1967.
With a connection to Chile through his partner Alejandra Altamirano, Brett became involved with Latin American solidarity movements in 1973, the year when a military coup d’état took power in Chile. He was in Buenos Aires as part of a journey around the continent to explore the relationships between art and the social environment.
The center used this event to focus on an interdisciplinary approach and share the possibilities that recent social theories might offer for artistic activity, particularly those that supported the CAYC’s program of activities and the creation of an institutional poetics of its own that would establish the center’s identity.
