In the Shadow of Yalta: Art and the Avant-garde in Eastern Europe 1945-1989

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In the Shadow of Yalta is a comprehensive study of the artistic culture of the region between the Iron Curtain and the USSR, taking in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia. Piotr Piotrowski chronicles the relationship between art production and politics in this zone between the end of World War II and the fall of Communism, focusing in particular on the avant-garde.

Reviews

Piotrowskis achievement is to disinter the histories of various forms of modernism, post-modernism and the neo-avant-garde that flourished in Eastern Europe, to disentangle the fruitful misunderstandings on which some of them were based and to explain the originality that lay behind many of the apparent inconsistencies . . . Piotrowski writes clearly and readably, even in translation, and his groundbreaking study is augmented with numerous illustrations. * Burlington magazine *
Piotrowskis book is a truly ground breaking publication, both in its scope and in its critical approach, in its engagement with theory and with artistic practice as well as with the wider geopolitical framework of the Cold War. It provides plenty of illuminating insights into the pages of post-1945 avant-gardes and their discourses . . . Piotrowski contextualizes the shifting kaleidoscope of artworlds in the Other Europe within a wider realm of debates at the heart of contemporary art criticism. Remarkably, the book is not addressed solely to theignorant western audience, but equally so to the contemporary Eastern European reader, whose knowledge about the art of otherbrotherly countries is also likely to be minimal. * Reviews in History *
Piotrowskis book is dense with information and, while reading it, ones realizes that the history of post-World War II East European art simply cannot be squeezed into one volume. Ultimately, the book is an ambitious attempt at objectivity that nonetheless presents some of the key events and artworks of the period selectively . . . a major contribution to scholarship on Eastern Europe and is a treasure trove of facts, organized and sorted out in a way that has not been done before. * artmargins.com *
Piotrowski demonstrates persuasively that the visual art of Central and Eastern Europe must now become part of the mainstreamglobal canon of twentieth-century art, even as he vigorously questions whether such a canon can any longer have real meaning. This is the fascinating and problematic crux of Piotrowskis entire volume, and confronting the authors contemplation of such paradoxes is one of the true pleasures of reading In the Shadow of Yalta. * Slavonic and Eastern European Review *
A significant book that builds on a focal theme of Piotrowskis previous publications the perceived need to map art practices from the Soviet and post-Soviet eras in relation to both western and specifically local historical and cultural contexts . . . an important source in this topic area. * Slavic Review *
Analysis of artworks quickly turns into discussion of major issues that will be of value to historians interested in the role of culture in the maintenance of power. What, for instance, is the value of critical practice when it is tolerated and even sponsored by the power structures which it sets out to critique And what has been the fate of utopian thinking amongst Eastern European intellectuals * Journal of European Studies *
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 social and political circumstances of each country. * ARTnews *

Author Bio

Piotr Piotrowski is Professor of Art History at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznn, Poland. He is the author or editor of numerous books, including Meanings of Modernism: Towards a History of Polish Art after 1945 (1999), Art after Politics (2007) and In the Shadow of Yalta: Art and the Avant-garde in Eastern Europe, 1945-1989 (Reaktion, 2009).