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, and to the technical innovations that industry provided.
Architecture and design were always basic components of the CAYC’s interdisciplinary approach. In its early years, the center became affiliated with the Fundación de Investigación Interdisciplinaria, an organization that welcomed 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 that took place after the coup d’état 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 (a technique usually used for copying blueprints) in its exhibitions; the center’s partnering with the industrial sector in exhibitions and contests; and the presence of several artist-architects among the founders of the Grupo de los Trece.
In the mid-1970s, when the censorship and repression imposed by the Argentine military dictatorship (1976–83) made it impossible to produce the kind of politically explicit art that had been common since 1972, the CAYC started organizing different kinds of exhibitions such as Contemporánea 76 (GT-635; doc. no. 1477204), Imagen y palabra (GT-662; doc. no. 1478352), Arquitectos de Buenos Aires (GT-668; doc. no. 1477400">1477400). The center also organized a variety of events such as seminars and talks (GT574; doc. no. 1478995) that contributed to the development of architecture and alluded to the urgent sociopolitical situation less directly.
This newsletter announces the creation of the CAYC’s Departamento de Arquitectura and explains its basic principles, its organizational structure, and its functions, one of which was to organize Arquitectos de Buenos Aires, the exhibition that the CAYC presented in Belgium at the Internationaal Cultureel Centrum in Antwerp (GT-668; doc. no. 1477400">1477400).
This initiative was in line with the CAYC’s goal of positioning itself as an experimental and interdisciplinary institution that was interested in creating new forms of expression and communication.
