In any understanding of Argentine art of the 1990s, the Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas plays a key role. Founded in 1984, it was a center for cultural outreach of the Universidad de Buenos Aires, where various activities were carried out such as courses, talks, film series, etc. In 1989, a few years after it was opened, La Galería del [The Gallery of the] Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas was set up in its vestibule. This gallery was initially directed by the artist and art critic Jorge Gumier Maier; shortly later, Magdalena Jitrik came to the gallery to work with him. Though at the time, it was a marginal space within the Buenos Aires art milieu, between 1991 and 1992, it started to acquire a larger profile and visibility. The “El Rojas” artists were Fabián Burgos, Graciela Hasper, Feliciano Centurión, Martín Di Girolamo, Alberto Goldestein, Sebastián Gordín, Miguel Harte, Agustín Inchausti, Luis Lindner, Nuna Magiante, Emiliano Miliyo, Esteban Pagés, Ariadna Pastorini, Marcelo Pombo, Cristina Schiavi, Enrique Marmora, Sergio Vila, Benito Laren, Omar Schiliro and Alfredo Londaibere, etc. These artists began to be included in shows held at important exhibition spaces, such as the ICI (Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamericana) [Institute of Iberian-American Cooperation] of the Centro Cultural de España [Spanish Cultural Center] and the Ruth Benzacar Gallery. References to poetic art of the past—such as Pop art, Minimal art, and Concrete art (recreated in highly personal ways), as well as elements of kitsch—have been used to characterize the expressive resources of these artists. By the late 1990s, the artists who made up “el grupo del Rojas” [the Rojas group] were generally understood to be the representatives of “Argentine art of the 1990s.”The journal Página/12 [Page/12] reviewed all the exhibitions held by the Galería del Rojas, right from the start. The title of this article and the characterization of the gallery as “a space—or rather a hole in the wall” assume special relevance in this particular discourse. Here, the writer situates “the margins of the art milieu” in the “center of what is art.” In this instance, the margins are legitimized by the persona of Pablo Suárez (1937-2006), an artist with a long career. At the time of the article, the writer, Miguel Briante (1944-95), was a journalist, scriptwriter and editor of the visual arts section of the journal Página/12 and an adviser to the Centro Cultural Recoleta (1989-1990). Later, between 1990 and 1993, he assumed the role of director of that space.
