This press article reports on the activities of the avant-garde during the brief but transcendent lifespan of the Sardio group (Caracas, 1957–60), whose members included young writers, poets, painters, film critics, and playwrights. They had a gallery and published (seven issues of) a magazine, both called “Sardio,” where they welcomed and presented avant-garde painting, new literature, and experimental theater. The bookstore-gallery of the group hosted this exhibition of abstract paintings by five former members of Los Once, the Cuban group that introduced their country to modernist visual art and its break with tradition.
In terms of common values and goals, there was an obvious compatibility between the Sardio group and the five Cuban artists who participated in the exhibition: Hugo Consuegra (1929?2003), Tomás Oliva (1930–96), Raúl Martínez (1927–95), Antonio Vidal (1928?2013), and Guido Llinás (1923?2005). As noted in the article, the catalogue includes essays by important researchers, such as Loló de la Torriente, Salvador Bueno, Carlyle Burrows, Adela Jaume, Luis Dulzaides, Dore Ashton, Rafael Marquina, José Álvarez Baragaño, and the writer Severo Sarduy.
After the Sardio group disbanded, mainly for political reasons, the former members started other groups: El Techo de la Ballena and Tabla Redonda, both of which were influential in the 1960s.