In the shadow of Yalta - Art and the avant-garde in Eastern Europe 1945-1989

This book is the first comprehensive comparative study of the artistic culture of the region once located between the Iron Curtain and the Soviet Union, a part of Europe that due to the agreement signed by Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta in the Crimea in February 1945 found itself trapped within the Soviet Union s sphere of influence. Piotr Piotrowski chronicles the complex relation between avant-garde art practice and politics in Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, East Germany, Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria from the end of the Second World War to the collapse of Communism in 1989. Beginning with an analysis of Surrealism in Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Hungary, Piotrowski examines the development of different Modernist art strategies within the context of a thawing Stalinism. He follows with an account of the emergence of neo-avant-garde practices - conceptual, body and performance art - during the volatile political circumstances of the 1970s. The book s