PRINT NETWORKS: Edgardo Antonio Vigo and Artists’ Periodicals

Opening speech by Professor Marie Boivent, Université Rennes 2, curator of the collection display

Date: 9 October 2025, 5:00 PM

Round table discussion: 10 October 2025, 3:00 PM

Born in La Plata, a city located sixty kilometers from Buenos Aires, Edgardo Antonio Vigo (1928-1997) Argentine artist and well known figure of Latin American artistic resistance in the 70s, developed a prolific, multifaceted, and experimental practice over the course of his forty-year artistic career, one that defies categorization. From assembling impossible machines to new poetry, from wood engraving to photocopying, from collages and paintings to actions in public spaces, he constantly navigated between techniques, media, and genres. Influenced by the avant-garde and concrete art, his work engages a conceptual stance as much as it evokes Fluxus attitudes.

This chamber exhibition at Artpool aims to highlight Vigo’s special relationship with artists’ periodicals and show how he embraced this medium, having quickly realized that these publications, as shared creative spaces that are simple to produce, are also powerful means of dissemination. Vigo was constantly involved in alternative collective periodicals, both as a contributor and as a publisher. He himself launched several series, including four periodicals: W.C. (5 issues, 1958–1960), DRKW ’60 (3 issues, 1960), Diagonal Cero (28 issues, 1962–1969), and Hexágono ’71 (13 issues, 1971–1975).

The collection display is based on the Mail Art exchanges conducted by György Galántai and Júlia Klaniczay, founders of Artpool, which made it possible to assemble a collection of postcards by Vigo, as well as numerous Mail Art periodicals from Europe, North America, and Latin America to which the Argentinian artist contributed (sometimes with Graciela Gutiérrez Marx, with whom Vigo formed the duo G. E. Marx Vigo from 1979 to 1983).

Vigo’s work, long recognized in Argentina and Latin America thanks to numerous academic studies and several landmark solo exhibitions, remains relatively unknown in Europe, with too few events dedicated to it. This collection display at Artpool, as an essential historical archive of Mail Art, aims to contribute to his recognition in Europe by giving visibility to this marginal yet essential poet, artist, and publisher.

Curated by Marie Boivent

The collection display can be viewed by appointment until 28 November, artpool@szepmuveszeti.hu.

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