Grupo de CAYC

Grupo de CAYC, a group of Argentine artists, based at the Centro de Arte y Comunicación (CAYC) in Buenos Aires, who pioneered the development of "systems art" in Argentina in the 1970s. The CAYC was founded in 1969 during the so-called Revolución Argentina of 1966–1973, which established General Juan Carlos Ongania's repressive military dictatorship. Its purpose is to unite artists and theorists from various disciplines—primarily art, architecture, and communications—and to encourage the integration of art, science, and social concerns through experimental projects in these fields. It has sponsored courses, exhibitions, symposia, and other events that have attracted intellectuals from throughout the world. The Grupo de CAYC, known occasionally as the Grupo de 13, was founded in 1971 by the art critic Jorge Glusberg. Inspired by a talk at the CAYC by the avant-garde Polish director Jerzy Grotowski, Glusberg invited twenty-five artists to establish a "laboratory" similar to Grotowski's Laboratory Theater in Warsaw. Twelve accepted: Jacques Bedel, Luis Benedit, Gregorio Dujovny, Carlos Ginzberg, Víctor Grippo, Jorge González Mir, Vicente Marotta, Luis Pazos, Alfredo Portillos, Juan Carlos Romero, Julio Teich, and Horacio Zabala.

These artists subsequently invited the English psychoanalyst David Cooper to analyze the group's internal dynamics. By 1975 it was formally constituted as the Grupo de CAYC with these members: Bedel, Benedit, Glusberg, Grippo, González Mir, Marotta, Pazos, and Portillos, as well as Leopoldo Maler and the architect Clorindo Testa. Since the early 1970s, these artists have pursued what Glusberg has called "systems art"—a nexus of non-traditional modes of art deriving from the tradition of Marcel Duchamp, including conceptual, ecological, body, and performance art. Their work is notable for its experimental quality, its commitment to affirming the inextricable relationship between art and society at large, and its ability to address simultaneously the Latin American condition and universal concerns. The Grupo de CAYC has exhibited widely in Latin America and Europe. In 1977 it received the Premio Itamaraty at the XIV Bienal de São Paulo.

See alsoBuenos Aires; Onganía, Juan Carlos.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Group of Thirteen at the XIV Bienal de São Paulo, exhibition catalog (1977); CAYC Group at the Bank of Ireland, Dublin, in Association with ROSC '80, exhibition catalog (1980).

Jorge Glusberg, Art in Argentina (1986).

Sally Baker, ed., Art of the Americas: The Argentine Project (1992).

Additional Bibliography

Ivelic, Milan, and Jorge Glusberg. Grupo CAYC: 9 al 30 de agosto, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago-Chile. Santiago: El Museo, 1994.

                                          John Alan Farmer