The Grupo de Arte de Vanguardia de Rosario—created by a fusion of three workshops, with artists from different artistic organizations (alumni from Juan Grela, the Grupo Taller, and recent graduates of the Escuela de Bellas Artes de la Universidad)—initiates its public collective actions and position statements at the end of 1965. Two years later, the group acquires more cohesion and is acknowledged as one of the most dynamic experimental art groups in the country. The Ciclo de Arte Experimental [Experimental Practices of Art Series], planned for the early 1968, began in May inside a space that was given to the group by an advertising agency. A short time later, the Instituto Di Tella from Buenos Aires granted it a subsidy that allowed the group to rent a small glass space inside a commercial gallery. Every two weeks, until October 1968, the group would stage an exhibition proposed by one of its members.
The last three presentations of the Ciclo (by Eduardo Favario, Rodolfo Elizalde / EmilioGhilioni, and Graciela Carnevale) were, in some ways, the most radical expression of the group’s anti-formalist and anti-institutional stance.
When Graciela Carnevale locked her audience into the exhibition space, she also— unintentionally—shut down the Ciclo. Invitations had been circulated and an ad was placed in the paper inviting people to the opening of a new happening in the Series. Once a number of people had gathered in the small space, Carnevale closed the only door, locked it with a padlock, and left. The confinement was no mock exercise (unlike earlier installments of the Series by both Favario and Ghilioni & Elizalde that could be staging an idea of representation once the interventions were explained as “artworks”). On the contrary, Carnevale’s event became a real-life experience, brimming with violence. The gallery-goers waited patiently for a couple of hours and were then able to leave through a window that was broken by an assistant who had remained outside the gallery and decided to rescue those who were trapped inside. Thinking that the assistant would ruin the intervention, another member of the group tried to stop him by force, which created a brouhaha, which in turn led to the intervention of the police and the subsequent closure of both the Series and the space.