This article includes the Grupo Manifiesto [Manifesto Group] statement condemning the 1972 Salón Nacional in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on the grounds that it was being used by the people in power to further their own political agenda. Meanwhile, just as local artists were boycotting the event, the Argentine Undersecretary for Culture announced the rules governing the Salón Nacional, in which article 36 stipulates that those who agree to serve on the jury must affirm that they are aware of the rules and will abide by them. 

Argentina’s Salón Nacional de Artes Plásticas [National Salon for the Visual Arts] was founded in 1911, and its regulations were modified over time whenever it was deemed necessary to do so. In 1968 and 1969 the Salón Nacional included the Sección “Investigaciones Visuales” [“Visual Research” Section] in order to provide space for new forms of experimental art (kinetic objects, Pop, etc.) which in turn led to the Certamen Anual de Investigaciones Visuales [Annual Visual Research Contest] in 1970 and 1971. At the II Certamen Nacional de InvestigacionesVisuales [2nd National Visual Research Contest], organized during the de facto administration of [President] Alejandro Agustín Lanusse (1971-1973), the authorities censored the works that had been awarded grand runner up and first prizes. The government used Executive Decree 5696/71 to exclude the prize-winning works from the exhibition and declare them “unacceptable” due to their “manifest ideological intent.” As a result, neither of the jury’s two prizes was awarded. The government’s decision was condemned by artists and by certain cultural organizations, and led to several lawsuits. La Opinión, the Argentine newspaper founded by Jacobo Timerman in 1971, was critical of the government and its actions. In 1977 it was closed and expropriated by the de facto regime of [President] Jorge Rafael Videla (1976-81). Hugo Monzón was an Argentine art critic in charge of the Visual Arts Section of La Opinión. and the director of the Museo de Artes Plásticas [Museum of Visual Arts] Eduardo Sívori. The Grupo Manifiesto was formed after the events surrounding the II Certamen Nacional de InvestigacionesVisuales, and included: Diana Dowek, Daniel Costamagna, Alfredo Saavedra, Magdalena Beccarini, Fermín Eguía, and Norberto Maylis.This article was chosen because it describes how artists reacted to the National Salon a year after the arbitrary measures taken by the authorities against the II Certamen de Investigaciones Visuales in 1971, and reports on their response to the oppressive curtailment of freedom of expression and the censorship imposed by the regime that was in power at the time. The events described in this article are related to the decision taken by the meeting of the Sociedad Argentina de Artistas Plásticos [Argentine Society of Visual Artists], details of which were published in La Opinión newspaper on August 1, 1972.