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Part I · Moving People
The fall of the military dictatorship in 1974 brought with it a number of changes in the political, social, and cultural life of Greece. The most impor- tant of the decisions taken was the authorization—after twenty-seven years underground—of the Greek Communist Party. The communist newspaper Rizospastis and the Communist Review also reappeared, and several refugees and exiles returned to the country. The old socialist realist artists remained faithful to their habitual style, but the majority of them mixed socialist re- alism with various modernist styles, without abandoning their political and ideological orientation and their loyalty toward Moscow. One could mention here the revolutionary spirit that several works by the sculptors Apergis, Lou- kopoulos, and Zoggolopoulos tried to inspire—with the main subject being memories of the resistance. The Greek public was thus able to see these cre- ations that had previously remained underground and unknown: the works were exhibited at the Athens National Gallery, but also in a number of pri- vate galleries. Following the fall of the dictatorship, many exhibitions from socialist countries were shown in Greece. The most important were those held at the Athens National Gallery, such as that dedicated to Romanian art in 1984 and organized in collaboration with the congress of civilization and socialist education and the union of artists of Romania. Two other exhibitions were held at the Athens National Gallery: in 1985, the GDR sent an exhibition of engravings, and in 1986 Yugoslavia showcased contemporary art created in this neighboring but little-known country. Other less prestigious venues also exhibited artists from socialist countries (in 1987, the Municipal Gallery of Athens exhibited the Albanian sculptor Odysseas Paschalis and the Bulgari- an painter and engraver Kalin Balev). But it was in the images sponsored directly by the Greek Communist Par- ty that socialist realist forms remained most visible. The political posters and banners carried by demonstrators on a number of marches that shook Athens and other Greek towns in the 1970s and 1980s were the most important me- dia for the endurance of socialist realism in Greece—proof that this art con- tinues to draw its strength from political activism. F rom the outset in the avant-garde of the early twentieth century, construc- tive-concrete art was international. As an artistic expression that should not re- fer to nature, sensuousness, or emotion in its formal appearance (i.e., to be of purely mental origin, and only using the basic elements of painting—line, col- or and space), it spread over Europe and influenced several artists in the 1930s. This proliferation was promoted by the emigration of artists, at first from Russia in connection with the fundamental political changes after Josef Stalin came to power and later by the Machtübernahme (seizure of power) of the Nazis. Since in both totalitarian systems the constructive-concrete art was no longer accept- ed as an artistic expression or defamed as decadent just because of formal as- pects, its development in these countries and in all occupied ones was interrupt- ed, while it developed continuously at least in the western parts of Europe. But no later than the beginning of the 1950s, the postulate of socialist realism ap- plied to East-Central European countries and “the goal of concrete art . . . to cre- ate objects for mental use, just as man develops objects for material usage” 393 op- 393 Max Bill, “Vom Sinn der Begriffe in der neuen Kunst,” in Konkrete Kunst. Manifeste und Künstlertexte. Stu- dienbuch I, ed. Margit Weinberg-Staber (Zürich: Stiftung für konstruktive und konkrete Kunst, 2001), 50. Doris Hartmann 16 Constructive-Concrete Art in the GDR, Poland, and Hungary 202 203 2. The Moscow Underground Art Scene… Part I · Moving People posed the demands of this postulate diametrically. This is why the preconditions for artistic work in the field of constructive-concrete art became very much de- pendent on the cultural policy in these countries. Nevertheless, numerous artists devoted themselves to the field of constructivism and concrete art in all coun- tries of the Eastern Bloc. Just as the following comparison of developments in the GDR, Poland, and Hungary will reveal, not only did the possibilities to deal with the histor- ic background of this art movement, to act artistically self-employed or to ex- hibit in public vary in these countries, so did the chances of artistic exchange within the bloc and with noncommunist European countries. There was a strong tradition in constructive-concrete art in Germany, Po- land, and Hungary. In Hungary it was connected with artists such as Vilm- os Huszár, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Sándor Bortnyik, and in Poland with groups of artists such as BLOK, praesens or group a.r. In contrast, Germa- ny of the 1920s and 1930s was more a place of artistic exchange or a station of Eastern European artists on their way through the artistic centers of the time. In a manifold manner artists socialized with other artists in Berlin, e.g., in the Galerie Der Sturm, at the Bauhaus in Dessau or at the International Congress of Constructivists and Dadaists in Weimar in 1922. It was the aim of several artists who returned to their native country at the end of World War II and the artistic suppression by the Nazis to con- nect with this tradition. This was especially so in the first years after the war, which were characterized by an emerging spirit of optimism that seemed to offer a very liberal attitude toward all stylistic movements of the avant- garde, encouraging these artists in their intentions. Henryk Stażewski and Władysław Strzemiński, for example, had a great impact on the constructive- concrete art of the postwar period in Poland, whereas Lajos Kassák and Sán- dor Bortnyik became important role models and teachers of the postwar gen- eration in Hungary. Even though it can be noted that increased government restrictions against nonfigurative art at the end of the 1940s led many artists to withdraw to privacy in all Eastern European countries, it was nonetheless possible to revive constructive-concrete art. In East Germany, pluralism of figurative and abstract artistic styles was not able to survive the first years after the end of the war. With the beginning of the realist-formalist debate in 1948 it was displaced by the demand for re- alistic works of art follow the example of Soviet art. In addition, the rediscov- ery of constructivism and concrete art was made much more difficult by the predominance of expressionism in the 1940s. Even the grand old master of constructive-concrete art in the GDR, Her- mann Glöckner, was forced to earn his living with decorative works within architecture, while his work on the Konstruktivistisches Tafelwerk—a collec- tion of constructive-concrete plates started in 1933—could only be developed in the isolation of his studio in Dresden-Loschwitz. And although Glöck- ner had been participating in exhibitions in the Federal Republic of Germa- ny since the mid-1950s, his work remained almost unknown in the GDR un- til the end of the 1960s. This is why it cannot be said that he had a comparable influence on the younger generation, as has been noted for Stażewski in Po- land and Kassák in Hungary. The same goes for other artists of the avant- garde who lived in the GDR at the time, including Otto Müller-Eibenstock, Franz Ehrlich, Kurt Schmidt, and Hajo Rose, to mention just a few. In addition, the development of a constructive-concrete community in the GDR was also made more difficult by the disapproval of the Bauhaus tra- dition and its defamation as a “genuine child of American cosmopolitism” 394 by the officials. Therefore, artists such as Karl-Heinz Adler, Horst Bartnig, Friedrich Kracht, Wilhelm Müller, and Inge Thiess-Böttner—all belonging to the first postwar generation—came to deal with constructive-concrete art indirectly. But this also provided for a very individual kind of work and ex- pression. In contrast to some statements that were made after the breakdown of the Iron Curtain—that artists had to work in isolation during the existence of the regime and felt cut off not only from the international developments of concrete art, but also from other artists of that field within their own coun- try—these artists always found a way to keep informed. As far as possible they used visits to obtain literature and pictures of the latest exhibitions and to es- tablish contact with artists in order to facilitate further exchanges. However, the main exchanges occurred through the neighboring states in the East, es- pecially through galleries, museums, and artists in Poland. 394 Werner Schmidt, Ausgebürgert. Künstler aus der DDR und dem sowjetischen Sektor Berlins 1949–1989 (Ber- lin: Argon Verlag, 1990), 48. 204 205 2. The Moscow Underground Art Scene… Part I · Moving People The extreme exclusion of constructive-concrete art from the art scene in the GDR is also made clear in the possibility of international exchanges in terms of exhibitions or the chance to participate in exhibitions. Not until the political conditions changed toward a broader reception of avant-garde art and the ongoing inclusion of constructive-concrete elements and forms to the applied arts in the 1960s by interpreting it as a “test of aesthetic design,” 395 were artists able to make their works public, not only in what were known as flat galleries. Due to a close-knit network of collectors and connoisseurs, and the occasional efforts of gallery owners and directors of museums (Gallery Arkade and the Cabinet of Art at the Institute of Teachers’ Further Educa- tion in Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett in Dresden, and the Central Institute of Atomic Research in Rossendorf), artists became known to a broader public in the late 1970s. And with the exception of Hermann Glöckner and Horst Bartnig, 396 no constructive-concrete working artist from the GDR partici- pated in any international exhibition before the mid-1980s. After 1948, Polish territory was also Stalinized. In the arts, the movement known as sozrealism was enforced, which was partly connected with a “dis- ruption of the avant-garde traditions, [and a] programmatic breakup of con- tacts with the international artistic community.” 397 Anyhow, the strength of the influence of the USSR was unstable for a long time. For several reasons, mainly economic, opposition to the government grew and resulted in the Pol- ish October of 1956. As a consequence of this historic event, Poland regained a certain amount of sovereignty under the leadership of Wladysław Gomulka and the process of liberalization set in. This more liberal cultural policy applied, for example, to the continuation of the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódz and the steady extension of its collection with international works of art. It was founded in 1930, was strongly supported by group a.r., and became the place of a first-class collection of the international avant-garde. The collection was assembled in Poland and all over Europe, par- 395 Ulrike Goeschen, “Abstrakter Realismus—geht das? Zum theoretischen Umgang mit ungegenständlicher Kunst in der DDR,” in Abstraktion im Staatssozialismus. Feindsetzungen und Freiräume im Kunstsystem der DDR, ed. Karl-Siegbert Rehberg and Paul Kaiser (Weimar: VDG, 2003), 139. 396 Glöckner exhibited from the 1950s in the FRG. Horst Bartnig participated in different print biennials from 1979. 397 Nawojka Cieślińska-Lokowicz, “Freiraum Kunst. Eine Einführung,” in Verteidigung der Moderne. Posi- tionen der polnischen Kunst nach 1945, ed., Sylvia Weber (Künselsau: Swiridoff, 2000), 16. ticularly in Paris, where two members of group a.r., Henryk Stażewski und Jan Brzekowski, were living and working at that time. Michel Seuphor, who was also responsible for the compilation of works, pointed out that it was the second place of a permanent exhibition of avant-garde art in Europe. Dur- ing the German occupation of Poland, most of the collected works were de- nounced as degenerate art, but almost no work was destroyed or lost; the col- lection remained nearly untouched. After World War II the museum was approved by the state in 1950. Its di- rectors Marian Minich (1930–65) and Ryszard Stanisławski (1966–90) man- aged to make sure the museum’s Sztuki collection remained essentially an expression of international modernism and cultivated international collabo- rations. Donations made by several artists also contributed to the museum’s collection. In 1975 Mateusz Grabowski entrusted 230 works by young Brit- ish artists of the London Gallery to the museum. In 1981 Joseph Beuys set a milestone of transnational exchange with the Polentransport, when he trans- ferred about 1,000 works of art to Łódz himself. Likewise, artists such as Henryk Stażewski paved the way for a revitaliza- tion of geometric art in Poland. In Warsaw, where he owned a small art sup- plies store until 1949, he established an open space for art and artists through regular meetings. Soon he was surrounded by members of the younger gener- ation of constructive-concrete working artists: Kajetan Sosnowski, Zbigniew Gostomski, Ryszard Winiarski and others. It can be said that Stażewski con- tributed to the formation of a new generation of concretists in Poland. Later, Jürgen Blum-Kwiatkowski boosted the transnational exchange es- pecially between Poland and Germany in the field of constructive-concrete art in the gallery EL, which was founded in the very north of Poland, far away from the artistic centers, in Elbląg. In the first year of the Biennale of Spatial Forms that was organized by the gallery from 1965 onward, forty artists from Poland and abroad responded to the invitation. The organization of annual symposia for artists who used the language of geometry in Okuninka from 1984 by Bożena Kowalska served as a platform of exchange, especially for art- ists from the GDR. The results of the symposia were exhibited in Chełm, where one of the works remained in the collection. Due to all of this, the examination of prewar constructivism and the ex- change of contemporary artistic developments were possible for the whole pe- 206 207 2. The Moscow Underground Art Scene… Part I · Moving People riod in Poland. But this was a unique situation in the Eastern Bloc. During the period 1945 to 1949, a new generation of artist joined with the Hungarian prewar avant-garde. Directly after the end of World War II, they founded the European School (Europai iskola) in order to reach as many people and artists as possible to spread the ideas of modernism and support a pluralism of styles. They organized exhibitions, published books and gave lectures, enjoying a good deal of success. But in 1948 the repression by the so- cialist system became so strong that the group split up and many artists left the country. Another turning point in Hungarian art was the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, which led to an exodus of artists. It seems that not until 1968, when the first Iparterv exhibition started in an office for industrial planning in Budapest, did a broader public know that modernism and constructive-concrete art never ceased to exist in Hun- gary. Iparterv was a loosely connected group of young artists who did not fol- low the doctrine of socialist realism. They tried to associate themselves with Hungarian art history and with developments in Western Europe, so they did not focus on styles. They were engaged in various contemporary tenden- cies, from abstract painting to performance, mixing them or interchanging them in their own work. But how did they know about developments on the other side of the Iron Curtain? Hungarian artists were able to leave the country in order to vis- it Western European countries, museums, and galleries as early as the 1960s. International art magazines were provided in libraries and in the artists’ club Fészek, catalogs of Western European exhibitions circulated among the art- ists. But another essential opportunity for international exchange and the possibility to work was given to the artists from the Eastern Bloc, and espe- cially to Hungarians, by the Museum Folkwang in Essen from 1970. Artists such as Imre Bak, István Nádler, László Lakner, or Dora Maurer were sup- ported by the museum scholarship, which included the possibility to live and work in Essen-Verden for at least two months and to exhibit afterward at the Museum Folkwang. Officials closed the first Iparterv exhibition after a few days. One reason might have been that no application had been submitted and there had been no official approval of an exhibition, but it can be supposed that it was closed because it opposed the official cultural policy. But altogether the cultural pol- icy of Hungary was much more liberal than in the GDR, so constructive-con- crete working artists were allowed to exhibit nationally and internationally on a regular basis. For this reason, Hungary became a center of attraction for many artists from the Eastern Bloc. In the first fifteen years the transnational artistic exchange in the field of constructive-concrete art was mainly based on the connections and con- tacts of the members of the avant-garde in Poland and Hungary. While it was possible in Poland to hold regular exhibitions and cooperate with artists from abroad, international relations seem to have been cut off at the begin- ning of the 1950s in Hungary as well as in Germany. Nevertheless, a young- er generation of art historians and artists managed to network again. The ex- change of exhibition catalogs or of graphic works of art, which could be sent by mail, was central to this. But it has to be pointed out that somehow the fo- cus was more or less on exchanges with Western European countries. This might have been caused by the predominance of American influences on the constructive-concrete art from the late 1950s in the form of color-field paint- ing, Hard-edge, minimal art and concept art. Nevertheless, there was an ac- tive exchange within the Eastern Bloc. Graphic art biennials and exhibitions of poster art or other fields of applied arts in which many constructive-con- crete artists worked provided a chance for them to be in contact with each other in professional and trust-building contexts. However, this was a very generalized depiction. Differences do not only occur in regard to the cultur- al political situations of the countries, but also in regard to the generations of artists and each individual artist. 208 209 Part I · Moving People T he late 1940s are probably one of the key periods in the history of Eu- ropean culture. I mean several years, not just 1945, since the Sovietization of culture in Central Europe was not a single event, but a long process that took several years and did not develop at the same speed in all the countries of the new Eastern Bloc. In Romania, decisions about culture were taken quite quickly, in contrast to Czechoslovakia, which kept its multiparty democrat- ic system until the communist coup d’etat in February 1948; this was only the beginning of the Sovietization of culture, although, paradoxically, a very hard line in cultural policy was introduced more or less at the time of Sta- lin’s death in March 1953. It should be added that the famous monument of the Leader, towering over the city of Prague, was built after his death. In Po- land and Hungary, the process continued for much longer than in Romania and in different political frames of reference, even though communists seized uncontrolled power in both countries as early as 1945. Polish and Hungari- an artists enjoyed a certain degree of freedom for some time and hoped—in vain, as soon became clear—not only that they would be able to keep their ar- tistic liberties, but also, as is rarely remembered, that they would be allowed Piotr Piotrowski 17 Nationalizing Modernism: Exhibitions of Hungarian and Czechoslovakian Avant-garde in Warsaw 210 211 2. The Moscow Underground Art Scene… Part I · Moving People to contribute to the new reality. Soviet domination and the new political re- gime were, of course, imposed on the countries of Central Europe violently, but on the other hand, the communists very skillfully relied on the leftist and critical tendencies, strong among the intelligentsia in the 1930s. Many art- ists and intellectuals, both in Hungary and in Poland, accepted the new po- litical system as a genuine promise to create a utopia, and not until the 1940s did the socialist realism imposed everywhere as the one officially recognized convention allowed in the public sphere largely undermine that hope. After the fall of Stalinism, during the time of the Thaw initiated by Khrushchev’s speech of early 1956, such hopes never reappeared in the artistic culture of the region. Besides, it should be remembered that in Czechoslovakia the Thaw came much later, and in Romania it came as late as the mid-1960s, while in Hungary, 1956 was the year of bloody atrocities after the Budapest Uprising. Only in Poland did the Thaw progress fairly rapidly in the late 1950s—more rapidly and deeply than in the USSR itself. Regardless of the local differences, both before and after the imposi- tion of socialist realism, modern art was a major point of reference all over Central Europe. The tradition of modern art, modernism, the avant-garde, etc. was understood in terms of different modes of representation and po- etics, which historically often remained in conflict with one another, but stemmed from the same system of values whose foundation was internation- alism, the international community, etc. The main conflict within modern art before World War II was that between autonomous and committed art, but both parties advocated an international artistic culture with its specific set of values. Outside modern art, its conflict with the conservative culture focused largely on nationalist values, next to, of course, the formal ones. It is important to keep in mind that modernism, to put it in the most gener- al terms, was international. My line of reasoning in this article begins right at this point. It should be remembered that the communist doctrine favored a sim- ilar system of values, at least on the literal, rhetorical level of its ideolo- gy. Matters became a little more complicated in practice when Stalin pro- claimed “communism in one country,” while Trotsky preferred a “global revolution,” but in their rhetoric the communists never renounced their “internationalism.” Regardless of the practice of “real socialism,” writes Bo- ris Groys, socialist realism was a utopia of the poststate and postnation- al culture. 398 Such an ideology was international almost by definition, and as such it overlapped with the theory of modern art. The problem is, how- ever, that when we take a good look at the visual arts and the architecture of socialist realism, we find in them very few, if any, traces of modernity and the international style. On the contrary, various methods were used to con- textualize that artistic doctrine, adjust to the local background, refer to na- tional heritage, etc. A popular slogan—part of a definition of socialist real- ism—claimed that as art, it was “socialist in content and national in form.” For modern artists, theorists, and critics, totally marginalized at that time, it was a double sin. Even though some avant-garde leftist groups adopted the so- cialist or, rather, communist utopia as a beacon for art, for many others it was unacceptable. The result was an interesting tension between the internation- al rhetoric of communist ideology, and the national formula of communist art, to be seen primarily in the subject matter of paintings and architectural details. A more or less vigorous rejection of socialist realism in some Eastern Bloc countries after Stalin’s death seemed to provide a chance for a return of thinking about art in international terms. It paved the way for a revival of the modernist and avant-garde tradition understood as a remedy for the official party realism of the propaganda art of the regime. Still, my point in this article is a bit challenging. I want to demonstrate that because of the political context—the isolation of artists for political rea- sons (the rejection of Stalinism did not bring about a lifting of the Iron Cur- tain for culture and art)—the unofficial inter- or transnational art exchange resulted in the nationalization of modernism in the Eastern Bloc countries. In other words, I want to prove that although modern art was of interna- tional origin, the political situation and cultural policies of the communist regimes in particular countries—sometimes “harder,” sometimes more “lib- eral,” but always xenophobic and conditioned by changing political factors— the transnational (as I have said, most unofficial) exchange nationalized that art, making its specific versions national in character. 398 See in particular Boris Groys, Art Power (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008)—chapters: “Beyond Diversi- ty: Cultural Studies and Its Post-Communist Other,” 149–63, “Privatization or Artificial Paradises of Post- Communism,” 165–72. See also Boris Groys, “Back from the Future,” in 2000+Art East Collection: The Art of Eastern Europe, ed. Zdenka Badovinac and Peter Weibel (Wien-Bozen: Folio Verlag, 2001), 9–14. |
