In 1958, Industrias Kaiser Argentina (IKA), [an auto company] whose headquarters were in the province of Córdoba, launched the I Salón IKA [1st IKA Salon], aimed at giving greater exposure to local artists and their work. The Salon was originally limited to artists from Córdoba, but in the four subsequent editions the scope was widened to include artists from other provinces as well. In 1961, IKA decided to expand the parameters of the event to include the whole country, and organized an international, biennial painting contest. These Latin American Art Biennials were not only promotional vehicles for IKA, they were also an expression of the company’s Pan-American policy, endorsed and promoted by the Organization of American States (OAS.) This article emphasizes the mass communication function of the 3rd Latin American Art Biennial, which opened on October 14, 1966, in Córdoba, Argentina. The writer refers to the ideas proposed by Marshall McLuhan in Understanding Media, which made a distinction between “hot” media—i.e., those that, like photography, movies, and radio “achieve an impact, provide a great deal of information, are entirely visual and verbal, and demand minimal involvement of the audience […]” — and “cold” media — i.e., those that “create a continuous presence and involve the audience in an ongoing relationship. They are tactile, oral, audio media” […] “such as the telephone, television, other electronic media, and the current forms of the visual arts!” The article argues that IKA was already using all those means of communication but that the Biennial was a vehicle for “institutional advertising” which included an unimaginable “quantity (and quality) of media” that would be hard to improve upon. Twelve countries were represented at the third installment of the Biennial: Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Argentina. The jury, which was very international, included Alfred Barr, Director of Collections at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, who served as presiding judge; Sam Hunter, director of the Jewish Museum in New York; Arnold Bode, president of the Documenta Kassel in Germany; Carlos Villanueva, the Venezuelan architect; and Aldo Pellegrini, the Argentine poet, essayist, and critic. Following the pattern that was set the previous year, the 3rd Biennial decided against an exclusive focus on painting, and widened the scope of the international contest to include prints, lithographs, Argentine wood carvings, and experimental music sessions. The organizers also set aside space for an exhibition of works by Jesús R. Soto—the winner of the grand prize at the 2nd Biennial — and a tribute to Alejandro Xul Solar.
