This text, dated June 1968, announces the split of the Rosario art vanguard from artistic institutions. This rupture would result a few weeks later with an assault at a conference given by art critic Jorge Romero Brest. At the time, the Braque Prize (sponsored by the French Embassy in Argentina, 1968) had a censorship clause that forced these artists detachment of the existing artistic circuit. The anti-establishment tone of the text points to a deepening of the vanguard group’s rupture with the sanctioning procedures coming from the art institution, understood as the one who “hold the ‘power’ to determine artistic worth.” All this happening, however, within the limits “proposed by the bourgeoisie.” In addition to the rejection of places where “bourgeois art” is instituted, there is an element arising from the international political scene: condenmation of the French government’s repression of student and worker protests in May 1968 in Paris and in other French cities. The Rosario artists defined themselves as a group “whose purpose is to modify the rules of the game and subvert the established order,” and this definition highlights the group’s radicalization. 

In June 1968, shortly after the French [student strikes in] May, the appearance of a censorship clause in the invitation to participate in the Braque Prize, sponsored by the French Embassy, unleashed a joint reaction from the Rosario and Buenos Aires cultural vanguard groups. The ruling instructed the invited artists to “point out the possible existence of photos, phrases, or writings that are part of the work.” Furthermore, the organizers reserved the right to “make any changes they might judge necessary.” If the purpose of this clause was to avoid the prize being awarded to works expressing the anti-institutional stand of the emerging vanguard groups of Argentina, the censorship had a boomerang effect.

The resigning artists decided to intervene in the awards ceremony on July 16 at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. During twenty very agitated minutes, they threw around FATRAC (Frente Antiimperialista de Trabajadores de la Cultura) flyers, rotten eggs, and stink bombs at the officials and especially at the prizewinning work, which its creator, Rogelio Polesello, had created based on the colors of the French flag. There were physical struggles, thrown punches, and lots of running around inside the museum. Everything came to an end with a strong reaction by the security forces: the police intervened rapidly, closing the entrance doors and arresting nine people, who were sentenced to thirty days in jail.