The editorial categories are research topics that have guided researchers during the recovery phase and continue to be the impetus behind the Documents Project’s digital archive and the Critical Documents book series. Developed by the project’s Editorial Board, each of the teams analyzed this framework and adapted it to their local contexts in developing their research objectives and work plans during the Recovery Phase. Learn more on the Editorial Framework page.
Hide
The author of this text, Juan Pablo Renzi, introduces the happening of one of his fellow members of the Grupo de Arte de Vanguardia de Rosario, Argentina, just as he had done for Norberto Púzzolo. In the case of [artist] Jaime Rippa, Renzi points out the commonalities between Rippa’s work and the four previous happenings by the Ciclo de Arte Experimental [Experimental Art Series]. These commonalities imply a break from Rippa’s own previous work in painting; this was partly recognized as such within the art market [of the time]. He upholds the artist’s right to produce an environmental work that refutes “la apropiación privada de la obra” [the private appropriation of artworks] given that they cannot be bought. In another part of the text, he emphasizes the man-made materialization of a concept achieved by modifying the environment.
The Grupo de Arte de Vanguardia de Rosario—composed of a combination of three artist workshops with differing educational backgrounds (students of Juan Grela, the Grupo Taller and recent graduates of the Escuela de Bellas Artes de la Universidad)—began its collective actions and public declaration of positions at the end of 1965. Two years later, the group had gained strength and was recognized as one of the most dynamic sources of experimental art in the country. Conceived during the summer of 1968, the Ciclo de Arte Experimental took place in May at a space donated by a publicity agency. The Insituto Di Tella of Buenos Aires later awarded [the group] a subsidy that allowed them to rent a small space at a commercial gallery. Two weeks later the group inaugurated a happening that had been proposed by one of its members; it ran until October 1968. The happening, proposed by Jaime Rippa, was the Ciclo’s fifth and it took place at the end of July 1968. It continued to explore the idea of the environment as the space of a work; various members of the group had been investigating [this idea] since 1966. According to historian Guillermo Fantoni, the happening [explored the notion] from “a more visual and formalist perspective,” than the previous happenings. It consisted of an environment created with tensile threads suspended from the roof toward different points of the gallery, partly prohibiting passage through the space.