Artes gráficas y la Exposición Nacional del libro de 1928: materialidad, arte e industria en la producción del libro en Argentina

In September 1928 was held in Buenos Aires the First National Book Exhibition, an event that agglutinated much of the discussions around the advancement of the publishing industry in the 1920’s, while representing a significant milestone for the consolidation of graphic arts in Argentina. In the first decades of the XXth century, diverse institutional initiatives gradually shaped a tradition of engraving as a “book art”, allied to literary illustration. The Exhibition collaborated to a large extent with this process: it assigned a space for an engraving and luxury editions exhibition, and it counted with the attendance of a special commission of illustrators, formed by Adolfo Bellocq and Alfredo Guido, among others, who worked intensely as promoters of engraving trade from both artistic and pedagogical practice. Furthermore, the strategy that was used to promote the event had a certain tradition in graphic arts: the artistic poster contest. We propose to analyze this exhibition in its aspects related to the circulation of images and ideas around the book like an object as its own right and, particularly, the early tensions related to graphic arts within the Argentine publishing industry.