Having been expelled from the United States, David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896–1974) traveled to Montevideo in February of 1933, and by the end of May in that same year, he had established himself in Buenos Aires. In the River Plate, Siqueiros experimented with technique and presented arguments based on the contents of his lecture Los vehículos de la pintura dialéctico-subversiva [The Vehicles of Dialectical-Subversive Painting], which he had developed while in the United States. In June he exhibited at Amigos del Arte [Friends of Art], a liberal and modernizing arts institution. He gave controversial lectures that polarized the arts field into the defenders of “arte puro” [“pure art”] and “arte político” [“political art”]. Siqueiros collaborated on the newspaper Crítica [Critique], run by Natalio Botana. Botana commissioned a mural, Ejercicio Plástico [Visual Exercise] carried out by Equipo Poligráfico Ejecutor [Lead Polygraphic Team] (Siqueiros, Antonio Berni, Lino Enea Spilimbergo, Juan Carlos Castagnino, and Enrique Lázaro).
His criticism on the Salón allows Siqueiros to ignite the discussion between pure art and social art—present in Argentinean art at that time—in order to support Spilimbergo’s performance, the closest artist to his preaching during his stay in Buenos Aires. See document no. 763426, in comparison with the other critical text about the Salón.
