In this comprehensive study of the artistic culture of the region between the Iron Curtain and the former Soviet Union, Piotr Piotrowski chronicles the relationship between avant-garde art production and post–World War II politics in such Iron Curtain nations as Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the former Yugoslavia. Featuring more than two hundred images, most by artists largely unfamiliar to an English-speaking audience,In the Shadow of Yaltais a fascinating portrait of the inspiring art made in a region—and at a time—of critical importance in modern Europe.
(1952–2015) was professor ordinarius of art history at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznán, Poland. He is the author or editor of many books, including
Meanings of Modernism: Towards a History of Polish Art after 1945.
1. The Geography and History of Art in Eastern Europe
Part I: Behind the Iron Curtain Before 1948
2. The Surrealist Interregnum, 1945-8
Part 2: Modernism and Totalitarianism
3. The ‘Thaw’ ofArt Informel
4. Myths of Geometry
5. Un-Socialist Realism
6. The Critique of Painting: Towards the Neo-avant-garde
Part 3: The Neo-avant-garde and ‘Real Socialism’ in the 1970s
7. Mapping the Neo-avant-garde, c. 1970
8. Conceptual Art between Theory of Art and Critique of the System
9. The Politics of Identity: Male and Female Body Art
Epilogue: The Spectres Haunting Europe in the 1980s
"This landmark study of postwar art in East-Central Europe by the late art historian Piotrowski, originally published in Polish in 2005, offers a nuanced, comparative overview of experimental art practices in Poland, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and East Germany under state socialism, accounting for regional commonalities without flattening the distinct lƒ&
![In the Shadow of Yalta: Art and the Avant-garde in Eastern Europe, 1945-1989 [Paperback]](/itemImage/2/2/6/6/2_5199866.jpg "In the Shadow of Yalta: Art and the Avant-garde in Eastern Europe, 1945-1989 [Paperback]")