The Chapel Studio in Balatonboglár, which was the antecedent to Artpool, held exhibitions which attracted international participants. It played a crucial role in establishing the Mail Art Archive and the Visual Poetry Archive. Many participants in  the international Mail Art network which evolved in the late 1960s exhibited works at György Galántai’s Chapel Studio in Balatonboglár. Many mail artists took part in the Tükör/Mirror/Miroir show (1973), which was organized by László Beke, and the Szövegek/Texts show (1973) organized by Dóra Maurer and Gábor Tóth. The invitation card for the summer programs held in Balatonboglár in 1973 in four languages was mailed to an international address list of some 2,000 people. In 1979, when Artpool was founded by György Galántai and Júlia Klaniczay, they joined the international Mail Art network, using the original list of contacts. One of the first Mail Art partners of Artpool was the German Klaus Groh. Groh published and distributed information, addresses, and calls for Mail Art in his IAC (International Artist’s Cooperation) newsletter. Meetings with Ulises Carrión’s (NL) Ephemera periodical and his Other Books and So bookshop and Aart van Barneveld’s (NL) Stempelplaats rubber stamp gallery in Amsterdam together with the alternative artists’ publications of the Parisian Vitrine pour l’Art Actuel were rather inspiring in 1978. The idea of founding Artpool sprang up thanks to the enormous international success of György Galántai’s poster publication Antecedents (1978) documenting his book objects.. Galántai stamped “Please send me information about your activity” on Antecedents and sent it to more than 1,000 artists and networkers all around the world. In response, he received scores of answers, catalogues, Mail Art pieces, and artists’ publications. Galántai’s strong intention to make available for the public and to distribute the information he received led to the foundation of Artpool in 1979. The “active archive” activity has been up and running since then. International correspondence and the exchange of information on art proved to be an invaluable tool for intellectual survival in countries isolated from the West by the Iron Curtain.

Operating as an illegal institution, the Artpool archive organized 18 projects between 1979 and 1990. Its first Mail Art exhibition (Sent Art, APS no. 4) presented works by 300 artists from 24 countries (Young Artists’ Club, Budapest, 1980). By publishing the Poolwindow Mail Art newsletter, Artpool significantly contributed to the dissemination of Mail Art in Hungary. Artistic exchange related to the artistamp exhibitions held in 1982 (Fészek Gallery) and 1987 (Museum of Fine Arts) put Artpool among the most important artistamp collections in the world.

During the Italian (1979) and the Western European Artpool’s Art Tours, György Galántai and Júlia Klaniczay personally visited many of their correspondents from the network, and this in turn helped the Artpool collections grow considerably. One of Galántai’s most inspiring networker project, which was spread across several years, was based on his artistic correspondence with Ray Johnson and the resulting activities of the fictive Buda Ray University (1982—1988).

In 1992, Artpool began to function as a public non-profit institution and organized several further network projects of which documentation is available online on the Artpool website.