Among the institutions that helped migrants integrate into Buenos Aires’ cultural life, the Agrupación de Intelectuales, Artistas, Periodistas y Escritores – AIAPE (Association of Intellectuals, Artists, Journalists and Writers) must be mentioned. Founded in 1936, the AIAPE brought together European artists and intellectuals exiled in Argentina, as well as Argentinians committed to contemporary aesthetics and current political issues.
The AIAPE published a magazine called Unidad por la Defensa de la Cultura (Unit for the Defence of Culture). Its illustrations sought to accompany and facilitate the written texts and to develop people’s libertarian imaginaries. The magazine featured the Spanish engravers Pompeyo Audivert, Juan Batlle Planas and José Planas Casas, as well as the German caricaturist Clément Moreau, all of whom published their artworks with the social impetus to engage with contemporary political issues. Most of them had a migrant background and had arrived in Buenos Aires in extremis, like Moreau, who fled his country in 1933.
The AIAPE also organised Salons and exhibitions. For their first Salon in 1936 at the Salón Municipal de Bellas Artes in Calle Perú 190, artists such as Pompeyo Audivert, Antonio Berni, Juan Carlos Castagnino, Clément Moreau and Anatole Saderman displayed some of their works. For the occasion, the art critic Cayetano Córdova Iturburu wrote from the pages of Unidad that these artists, “our artists”, were on the way towards a revolutionary art, “their art is what art should be: an expression of collective feelings and yearnings” (Córdova Iturburu 1936, 13). However, something was still missing: “they ought to free themselves from the foreign vision that still clouds many eyes, to see our reality with our eyes, to feel as artists this spectacle of a thriving society that is born from the ruins of a decadence and to acquire the appropriate technical language” (Córdova Iturburu 1936, 13).
The eight-year period during which the AIAPE was active correspond to a context of deep rethinking of the political system in Argentina. It had been a particularly difficult time in the country with military coup in 1930, the first of a long series that ended in 1983. In this context, the association sought to bring together centrist and leftist Argentine intellectuals in the common project labelled "defence of culture". Thus AIAPE emerged as one of many local responses to the global crisis of economic and political liberalism that began in 1929. It reflected the ideological upheaval of the 1930s and early 1940s, and strongly contributed to the articulation of left wing nationalism. The AIAPE maintained a high level of activity. Its cultural offerings included conferences, exhibitions, an ongoing painting and sculpture workshop under the direction of Cecilia Marcovich, a Jewish-Romanian painter and sculptor, a puppet theatre run by the German-descended Enrique Wernicke, and lectures on topics as diverse as jazz, provincial politics, and Uruguayan painting. Attendance at the lectures and events frequently exceeded the organisers' expectations.
On the demise of Unidad por la Defensa de la Cultura, a new publication, Nueva Gaceta, was launched, using the same format as its predecessor but appearing more regularly, with 24 issues published between May 1941 and June 1945. AIAPE had in addition two publishing houses: Ediciones AIAPE and Cuadernos AIAPE.