N 2007, the National Museum in Warsaw exhibited the part of its collec

Part I  ·  Moving People
studios and bought some works of Chernobrisov, who was an important fig-
ure for the young unofficial artists of the time and was seen as a spiritual lead-
er. He had, for instance, a list of St. Petersburg art collectors and galleries that 
he gave to young unofficial Byelorussian artists going to the city. This is how 
the young artists of the time realized their artistic entrance in St. Petersburg 
and sometimes found collectors willing to buy their works.
Ziterova organized the avant-garde art festival in 1988 in Narva, Estonia, 
in which the avant-garde artist from the former USSR republics of Russia, 
Belarus, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Georgia and others took part. “We spent five 
days there. ‘Novye dikie’ presented their video, ‘Mitki’ were getting drunk, 
Kashkurevich presented his performances in the woods, Vladimir Lappo, Vi-
taly Rozhkov, Igor Zabavchik, Viktor Petrov, Valery Martynchik, Andrey Be-
lov, Ludmila Rusova, Igar Kashkurevich and Olga Sazykina presented their 
works during the exhibitions. It was a good occasion to get out of the silence 
zone and to create a kind of unofficial art network with informal artists,” said 
Olga Sazykina of the festival. During one of his performances, Kashkurevich 
and others got under the tarpaulin pretending to swim there as if they were 
in the water and then reappeared and announced the performance title “The 
Loneliness of the Individual in the Crowd.”
The name of Ziterova is associated with the exhibitions in Krakow, too. 
Chernobrisov had several contacts with the Krakow Catholic Foundation, 
which aimed to open a small gallery in the central Catholic Church to orga-
nize some exhibitions there. Some Byelorussian unofficial artists (Grigoriy 
Ivanov, Matvey Basov, Olga Sazykina and Igor Malyshevskij) took the oppor-
tunity to organize several exhibitions there.
As far as we can see, the accidental nature of unofficial artistic contacts led 
to the dissemination of art exhibition practices which could have some visi-
ble aftereffects consisting in the enlargement of networks or a certain inter-
change with, or entrance into, the art market. Several exhibitions were signif-
icant because they offered artists the experience of becoming public, but they 
remained nonetheless isolated actions.
After the exhibitions, Ziterova had the idea of organizing a large exhi-
bition of Byelorussian unofficial artists entitled “With God in the Heart”; 
to this end, she bought the works of Goretsky, Sazykina, Chernobrisov and 
others for the Kardiorg Museum. For some unknown reasons, the exhibi-
tion did not take place and the works of art were probably left in the muse-
um. Recent attempts to find the works have proved fruitless, and this seems 
to be the general problem of the unofficial art practices—the impossibility 
of tracing the path of the migration of works of art and the definite loss of 
some of these works.
Another line of unofficial Byelorussia artists’ contacts with their colleagues 
from the former USSR republics and neighboring countries is that of Polish 
contacts, which we explored earlier with the description of the Krakow exhi-
bitions. They date from the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, 
when it became possible to buy a three-day ticket (
putiovka) from the labor 
unions.
140
 Some artists had relatives living in Poland and could travel freely to 
Poland. Sazykina and Khatskevich used this opportunity to show the hand-
made catalogs of Byelorussian artists’ exhibitions to owners of the galleries they 
stumbled across in Poland. This is how they found the gallery Napiórkowskiej 
w restauracji Pod Krokodylem, where the curator Katarzyna Napierkowska 
was working. She was more than interested in the works of art presented in the 
prospectus and was aware of the fact that the opening of the borders would be 
associated with the growing interest in the unofficial art of the former USSR 
republics. After a while, she went to Belarus to select the artists whose work she 
wanted to buy for the gallery. She was essentially interested in discovering the 
works of art that could be sold. In 1990, Katarzyna organized the first Byelorus-
sian exhibition in Poland, where the diplomatic world community was largely 
presented. The works of Plesanov,
141
 Malishevsky, Sazykina and Khatskevich 
were sold. There was TV coverage of the exhibition opening, and the story of 
the difficulties of the unofficial Byelorussian artists becoming public was told.
In 1991, the 
Belart exhibition of unofficial Byelorussian artists was orga-
nized in a deserted factory situated in the center of Warsaw. The exhibition 
was curated by the young curator from the Centre for Contemporary Art of 
Ujazdowski Castle. Works of art unofficially transported by train and by car 
140  One of the curious signs of the time was the double life lead by unofficial artists. They combined under-
ground artistic activities with official employment that gave them access to the materials and/or work-
places they needed to create their art, such as a job in a factory where glass painting was done, or access to 
basement ateliers, obtained from the housing department in exchange for creating decorative works for 
official celebrations.
141  Andrei Plesanov was born in 1948 in Minsk. He graduated from the Byelorussian Arts Academy in 1980. 
He is one of the most significant collectors of unofficial Byelorussian art and owns the largest collection 
of it. He has organized several exhibitions of Byelorussian unofficial artists inside and outside the country. 

78
79
2. The Moscow Underground Art Scene…
Part I  ·  Moving People
were then randomly placed all over—on the walls, in the windows, on the 
floor, on the technical equipment. Because the exhibition breached certain 
organizational regulations, some problems arose. But Byelorussian artists re-
call this event as having been very inspiring and having given them the op-
portunity to meet German and Polish artists and curators.
The practice of canvas transportation could actually be seen as one of the 
punctual tactics of unofficial art resistance. There were strict rules concerning 
the export of works of art, and artists had to seek the permission of the Com-
mission of the Ministry of Culture to take their work out of the country. To 
get this permission, they had to provide several documents, prove their au-
thorship, pay the export duty and sign papers obliging them to bring their 
work back into the country. Moreover, it was not possible to take more than 
five pieces of work abroad. This is how certain techniques were invented, such 
as stretching several canvases over the same frame or hiding finished works 
underneath an unused canvas. Therefore, artists actually took unused canvas-
es with them in order to create outside the country.
The curious practice of artistic journeys abroad, which could be compared 
with present-day artistic residencies, was becoming quite frequent during this 
time. This practice could be also seen as a reaction to the restrictions on art-
ists’ freedoms within the country. Byelorussian artists thus made arrange-
ments with gallery owners or people willing to buy works of art for their col-
lections. Gallery owners or potential buyers provided artists with a place to 
live and work for one to two weeks in exchange for a few pieces created by 
the artists during the journey. The crew of six to seven artists lived in the 
same apartment, working in the night and visiting the galleries where they 
left their works during the day. The galleries were everywhere—every hotel 
had a little gallery and gallery owners were glad to have Byelorussian artists’ 
work to sell or to include in their own collections. Katarzyna Napierkows-
ka received unofficial Byelorussian artists in her cottage. The artists worked 
there and eventually left their work to be sold. Thus, contacts with galleries 
were established, the exhibitions were organized and the laws of the art mar-
ket were discovered. It is worthwhile to point out that dozens of works of art 
were lost in these circumstances, and we have no choice but see this as a one 
of the inevitable consequences of the fragmentary and accidental character of 
unofficial artistic practices.
Thus, the research carried out on the unofficial contacts of Byelorussian 
artists with artists and curators from the former USSR republics and neigh-
boring countries in the period from the 1980s to the mid-1990s portrays the 
latter as fragmentary, particularly based on personal liaisons or accidental 
practices of gallery owners looking for art. Being undocumented, these con-
tacts are mythologized by the main actors, and should be carefully verified. 
Further, it would also be preferable to try to trace the path of the migration 
of works of art lost during this time.
The lines of contacts explored in this article are not exhaustive and could 
be developed and completed (with the St. Petersburg and Moscow networks, 
for instance). The question concerning the development of these practices 
and especially of those traces in the actual situation in the Byelorussian art 
scene, with its rather symptomatic division between official and unofficial 
art, and the obligatory institutional regulations of the art field, remains open 
for further research.
Figure 5.1. 
Exhibition in the gallery Napiórkowskiej w restauracji Pod Krokodylem, 1989. 
Courtesy of Andrei Plesanov.

80
81
Part I  ·  Moving People
I
 
n September 1976, the painter and president of the artist union of the 
GDR, Willi Sitte, received a letter from a West German whose name he had 
never heard before.
142
 The man introduced himself as Peter Ludwig, “CEO of 
Leonard Monheim KG, one of the largest chocolate producers in the world.” 
More than a year ago, he wrote, an instant hot chocolate production plant op-
erated by his company had been set up in Bergwitz (GDR) and he hoped for 
further cooperation to follow.
“As a sideline, in a way,” he was an art collector and Honorary Professor 
of Art History at the University of Cologne. Ludwig named a few prestigious 
honors awarded to him in recognition of his activities, then quickly came 
to the point: he wanted to visit the painter’s studio to see some recent work. 
Also, Ludwig was interested in collaborating with a museum of the GDR, 
possibly the Galerie Neue Meister in Dresden. “It would be an honor and an 
affair of the heart for me if I could help to close gaps within the overwhelm-
142  Peter Ludwig to Willi Sitte, Aachen (13 September 1976) as quoted in Claus Pese, “Willi Sitte. Werke und 
Dokumente,” 
Politik und Kunst in der DDR. Der Fonds Willi Sitte im Germanischen Nationalmuseum, ed. 
Großmann Ulrich (Nuremberg: Germanisches Museum Verlag, 2003), 68.
Boris Pofalla
6
Chocolate, Pop and Socialism:  
Peter Ludwig and the GDR

82
83
2. The Moscow Underground Art Scene…
Part I  ·  Moving People
ing wealth of the Dresden collections through permanent loans.” Further-
more, he called it a “painful lack” that there was no contemporary art from 
the GDR on display in Western museums.
Sitte considered the letter. Four years before, the Basic Treaty between 
the two German states had been signed. It led to the establishment of diplo-
matic missions in East Berlin and Bonn, acceptance of both Germanies into 
the UN and a series of cooperation projects and mutual expressions of good 
will.
143
 Still, there was no agreement on cultural exchange and very little was 
known in West Germany about the art created behind the Iron Curtain. One 
the one hand, a skeptical attitude was held by most West Germans toward so-
cialist realism and the role of artists in a totalitarian regime. The GDR, on 
the other hand, was keen to defend its own 
Nationalkultur against Western 
influence and “cultural diversion.” Any West German institution wishing to 
exhibit state-sanctioned art from the GDR could do so only in cooperation 
with the Communist Party of Germany, DKP. The first attempt at this had 
been made in 1975 by the (private) Hamburger Kunstverein under its direc-
tor, Uwe M. Schneede.
144
 For a public museum, dealing with the German 
Communist Party during the Cold War was impossible.
145
What was Sitte to do with Ludwig’s request? As it happened, the painter 
received a visit by his friend Horst Sindermann two days later. Sindermann 
was the president of the Council of Ministers, formally the GDR’s chief exec-
utive body. Sindermann was more familiar with the name Peter Ludwig, call-
ing him “a pioneer of the East–Western joint venture” made possible by the 
new head of state, Erich Honecker in 1971.
146
 It enabled the citizens of the 
GDR to buy Western goods manufactured by Western companies within the 
GDR. A large share of the goods, from Blaupunkt stereo systems to Nivea 
skin cream, was exported back to the FRG where the low wages of the East-
143  Christian Saehrendt, 
Kunst als Botschafter einer künstlichen Nation (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2009), 
64–73.
144 Uwe M. Schneede, ed., 
Willi Sitte. Gemälde und Zeichnungen 1950–1974 (Hamburg: Kunstverein Ham-
burg, 1975).
145  International exhibitions such as Documenta (since 1977) and the Venice Biennale (since 1982) were excep-
tions. See Gisela Schirmer, 
DDR und documenta. Kunst im deutsch-deutschen Widerspruch (Berlin: Reimer, 
2005), and Matthias Flügge, “Die Beiträge der DDR zur Biennale Venedig,” in 
Die deutschen Beiträge zur 
Biennale Venedig 1895–2007, ed. Ursula Zeller (Cologne: Dumont, 2007). 
146  See Peter Krewer, 
Geschäfte mit dem Klassenfeind. Die DDR im innerdeutschen Handel 1949–1989 (Trier: 
Kliomedia, 2008).
ern Bloc added to the profit of companies like Salamander, Bosch or Nestlé. 
The GDR was in dire need of foreign currency and consumer goods, and co-
operation with Western companies was an indispensable part of the econom-
ic strategy of the GDR, and Ludwig was a loyal partner. Within two weeks, 
Sitte decided to accept Ludwig’s offer. In December, the collector found him-
self in the studio of Willi Sitte in Halle.
147
 Discreetly, Sitte steered him away 
from the Galerie Neue Meister, whose director, Joachim Uhlitzsch, was an 
informer for the State Security (Stasi), spying on artists and foreign represen-
tatives.
148
 Instead, Sitte introduced him to Eberhard Bartke, the director of 
the National Gallery in East Berlin. Bartke saw Ludwig’s offer as an opportu-
nity to reconnect the National Gallery with Western art, a link brutally sev-
ered in 1933 and slightly renewed by Ludwig Justi between 1946 and 1957. 
Ludwig had become a public figure in 1968 as the only lender to the exhibi-
tion 
Kunst der sechziger Jahre in Cologne, introducing Pop art to a German 
audience.
149
 Holding a PhD in art history, Peter Ludwig steered the family-
owned Monheim KG, brought into the marriage by his wife Irene, née Mon-
heim, who is an art historian, too. Peter Ludwig was a connoisseur of many 
fields, including illuminated manuscripts, classical antiquities and contem-
porary art, which he had been buying in bulk since the 1960s. Both collec-
tors clung to the human figure and maintained a humanist worldview, with 
the art of the ancient Greeks as a foundation.
150
 Ludwig’s dissertation from 
1949 had revolved around Picasso’s idea of man, his 
Menschenbild, and put it 
into context with the one presumably held by artists and writers of the same 
generation.
151
 Picasso, who had never abandoned figuration and whose com-
munist, antiwar attitude was warmly welcomed in the GDR, featured prom-
inently in Ludwig’s collection. In 1977, hot chocolate and Picasso paintings 
were Ludwig’s entrance ticket to the National Gallery of the GDR.
147  Staatliche Museen zu Berlin–Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Zentralarchiv, VA 975, Correspondence of Direc-
tor General Eberhard Bartke to Hans Joachim Hoffmann, 9 December 1976, unpaginated.
148 See Hannelore Offner and Klaus Schroeder, eds., 
Eingegrenzt/Ausgegrenzt. Bildende Kunst und Partei-
herrschaft in der DDR 1961–1989 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2000), 225.
149  Gert von der Osten, ed., 
Kunst der sechziger Jahre. Sammlung Ludwig im Wallraff-Richartz-Museum (Co-
logne: 1969).
150  Peter Ludwig, “Preface,” in 
Antike Kunstwerke aus der Sammlung Ludwig, Vol. 1, ed. Ernst Berger (Basel: 
Zabern, 1979), 7–8.
151  Peter Ludwig, 
Picassos Menschenbild als Ausdruck eines generationsmäßig bedingten Lebensgefühls, Disser-
tation, Johannes Gutenberg Universität, Mainz (1950).

84
85
2. The Moscow Underground Art Scene…
Part I  ·  Moving People
The exhibition 
Contemporary Art from the Ludwig Collection, Aachen, 
opened on 29 September 1977. “It wasn’t treated like a sensation,” recalls 
Hans Jürgen Papies of the National Gallery, “but it was.”
152
 Fourteen artists, 
including Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, were on 
display, as well as five works by Pablo Picasso which established a link to the 
first half of the twentieth century.
153
 The selection had been made by Bartke 
and constituted the only example of international, Western art in the whole 
country. Although GDR artists were well-informed about contemporary 
Western art through illegally imported magazines and catalogs, having such 
works in the National Gallery was a sign of liberalization.
Cooperation between the socialist state and the art-loving capitalist was 
deepened during the following years. After 1977, Ludwig started buying 
art in the GDR at an unparalleled rate. At first, he focused on the key fig-
ures Willi Sitte, Bernhard Heisig, Wolfgang Mattheuer and Werner Tübke, 
who were sometimes called the 
Viererbande (Gang of four) due to their suc-
cess and influence. The focus of Ludwig’s interest later widened, but never 
touched the margins of underground art. To the patriot Peter Ludwig, the 
division between East and West German art was artificial, as both were pri-
marily German. While West Germany had oriented itself toward Paris and 
later toward New York City, the artists of the GDR, appalled by the propa-
ganda art of a Stalinist USSR, had nowhere to turn—and thus looked back. 
For that reason, “more German art” (Günter Grass) was created in the GDR, 
where painters like Menzel, Kollwitz, Corinth, and Beckmann were points 
of reference. An open-minded conservative with a preference for figurative 
painting, Ludwig was predestined to be susceptible to such art.
But what about the GDR? After successfully gaining international rec-
ognition in 1973, the cultural policy of the GDR was undetermined in the 
1970s. The officials feared an influx of Western values, yet they were eager 
to see the GDR represented in the West.
154
 More than once, Ludwig com-
plained about the officials’ lack of support.
155
 The catalog of his exhibition in 
152  Dr. Hans Jürgen Papies in conversation with the author, 13 July 2010.
153  Roland März and Hans Jürgen Papies, ed., 
Zeitgenössische Kunst aus der Sammlung Ludwig (Aachen, East 
Berlin: Staatliche Museen, 1982).
154 Saehrendt, 
Kunst als Botschafter einer künstlichen Nation.
155  Archiv Akademie der Künste Berlin, VBK Zentralvorstand, Sign. 174/4, Hans Mayr to Willi Sitte, 12 Oc-
tober 1978.
the National Gallery was delayed for five years—until Ludwig complained 
to his partner in business affairs, Günter Mittag. The influential Secretary of 
the Economic Commission within the Politbüro acted quickly. After a con-
frontational meeting of the Politbüro, the catalog was produced immediate-
ly, the preface written overnight by Hans Jürgen Papies instead of Eberhard 
Bartke.
156
 In his foreword, Papies linked Ludwig’s engagement to that of Wil-
helm Wagener, whose bequest of 1861 had laid the foundation for the Na-
tional Gallery.
157
Although there were critics of his influence, neither the State Security nor 
ideologues like Kurt Hager had much to say when it came to Peter Ludwig. 
Erich Honecker’s economic policy relied on welfare and an ever-increasing 
supply of consumer goods. It worked as a surrogate for a lack of democratic 
rights and was to prevent social unrest like in June 1953.
158
 Therefore, Peter 
Ludwig was a key figure who could act within the GDR with great freedom. 
A permanent visa was granted to him allowing uncontrolled and unlimited 
entry into the GDR at all times; when necessary, Willi Sitte made a call to the 
border guards to speed things up.
159
Ludwig first exhibited his eastern acquisitions in Aachen in 1979.
160
 Be-
fore making contact with the GDR, he had bought works by Gerhard Alten-
bourg and A. R. Penck, who were not part of the official canon of the GDR. 
Especially A. R. Penck, closely watched by the Stasi, was considered a con-
stant nuisance and a provocateur by Sitte and the Minister of Culture, Hoff-
mann.
161
 Since the 1960s, Penck’s works were smuggled out of the country 
by his gallerist Michael Werner, who had made him a prominent figure in 
the art world of West Germany. When the key representatives of the artists’ 
union VBK were to be shown in Peter Ludwig’s Neue Galerie in Aachen, 
Sitte called up Wolfgang Becker, the director of the Neue Galerie, telling him 
156  Dr. Hans Jürgen Papies in conversation with the author, 13 July 2010.
157  Eberhard Bartke, “Foreword,” in 
Zeitgenössische Kunst aus der Sammlung Ludwig, ed. Roland März and 
Hans Jürgen Papies (Aachen, East Berlin: Staatliche Museen, 1982), 5–7.
158  Günter Mittag, 
Um jeden Preis. Im Spannungsfeld zweier Systeme (Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 1991), 62–63.
159  Gisela Schirmer, 
Willi Sitte. Farben und Folgen. Eine Autobiographie (Leipzig: Faber & Faber, 2003), 254.
160 Wolfgang Becker, ed., 
Kunst heute in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (Aachen: Neue Galerie–
Sammlung Ludwig, 1979).
161 Bundesbeauftragten für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen De-
mokratischen Republik (BStU), Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS), 6245/91, vol. 4: Letter by the 
Minister of Culture, Hans-Joachim Hoffmann to Ursula Ragwitz, Head of the Culture Dept. at the Cen-
tral Committee of the SED, 14 December 1979, 43–47.

86
87
2. The Moscow Underground Art Scene…