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 scientific thinking. According to Glusberg, the coordination between theoretical thinking and artistic practice was an essential part of social change.
During the military dictatorship of General Juan Carlos Onganía, the CAYC became a cultural home for the Fundación de Investigación Interdisciplinaria (Foundation for Interdisciplinary Research), a space that welcomed a group of dissident professors from the Facultad de Arquitectura y Ciencias Exactas de la Universidad de Buenos Aires after the military takeover of the university in what came to be known as “La Noche de los Bastones Largos” (The Night of the Long Sticks) in June 1966.
In its early years the center organized a variety of activities with intellectuals that contributed to the circulation of ideas from different disciplines (analytical philosophy, mathematical logic, epistemological problems, psychology, semiotics, and linguistics), which had been excluded from official circles. The center’s interest led to the creation of the Escuela de Altos Estudios (EAE, the School of Advanced Studies) in early 1973. The objectives described in the newsletters that announced the founding of the school (GT-201; doc. no. 1478752, GT-201- A; doc. no. 1478753, GT-224; doc. no. 1478771, GT-219; doc. no. 1478755) were apparent in the activities organized by the EAE (some of which were more technical, while others were of a more interdisciplinary nature), as well as in the art produced by artists associated with the center.
Vicente Zito Lema (1939–2022) was a lawyer, poet, playwright, journalist, social psychologist, and teacher. In the 1970s he defended political prisoners and contributed to magazines such as Liberación, Nuevo Hombre, and Crisis. He was also a disciple of Enrique Pichón-Rivière (1907–1977), who introduced social psychology in Latin America. Approaching the question from this perspective, Zito Lema wondered about the nature of art making, which was the theme of the seminar he presented at the CAYC that was announced in this newsletter. Not long after that he expressed his thoughts in his book Conversaciones con Enrique Pichón-Rivière sobre el arte y la locura (Conversations with Enrique Pichón-Rivière about Art and Madness, 1976). In the mid-1940s, Pichón-Rivière hosted the Grupo Madí’s first exhibitions at his home.
Zito Lema left the country and lived in exile as a result of the coup d’état in 1976 and returned to Argentina in 1983. He was a member of the Comisión Argentina por los Derechos Humanos (CADHU, the Argentine Commission for Human Rights) and a cofounder of the Universidad Popular Madres de Plaza de Mayo.
