Among the actions and definitions of the emerging Argentinean vanguard groups in their Itinerario del ’68 [Timetable for 1968], the Primer Encuentro de Arte de Vanguardia [First Encounter of the Vanguard Art] stands out as the occasion on which these artists demonstrated the greatest self-reflection regarding their position after their rupture with artistic institutions. The artists from Rosario and Buenos Aires convened in the former. Throughout the weekend of August 10–11, a meeting took place that shows the density of the discussion process regarding the aesthetic and political ideas proposed by the Timetable for 1968, in which the visual artists express self-consciousness regarding the “extreme situation” in which they find themselves at that time.
The intensity of the ruptures in which they had a leading role placed them outside of—or even in opposition to—the modernizing circle with which they had co-existed until then. These artists display a markedly self-reflective attitude regarding their displacement, as well as the abandonment of the venues and lack of support (physical, material, and institutional) on which they had counted to produce art. This attitude is perceived in the writings (manifestos, fliers, and letters) they included in their interventions throughout the Timetable for 1968, but it is most evident in the scope of discussion at the group’s Primer Encuentro event, a discussion in which other important intellectuals would join.
The Encuentro evidenced the groups will to organize greater collective action, surpassing the existing groups, workshops, friendships, and affinities, through which the country’s emerging vanguardartists’ groups could be reunited. Indeed, this implies the set up of artists in a specific position of producing theory, something unheard of in the visual art’s milieu. They did not gather in order to carry out a work of art or to organize an exhibition; they gathered in order to evaluate where they stood and what direction they should take in order to direct their efforts.