Unblocking the Blocs. Intertwined Art Practices and Receptions in Divided Europe (1956 – 1972)

My lecture is derived from my forthcoming book on intertwined art practices and their critical reception in Cold War Europe within a polycentric area extended to the two German republics, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and Italy. Selected artists and art professionals from those countries will be investigated as active players to highlight the productive outcomes of the cultural Cold War and its role as a catalyst of artistic practice and critical discourse in divided Europe. In this framework, art practices will be analysed not in "spite of" or "regardless of" the cultural Cold War, but precisely because of it. A specific emphasis will be given to international art publications and exhibitions, not only as hotspots of cross-border encounters and negotiations, but also as public arenas for remote critical receptions and constructions of the “Other” across the Iron Curtain.
Matteo Bertelé is Associate Professor in Contemporary Art History at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. He was Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the University of California Santa Barbara (2018-2020). At Ca’ Foscari, he his chief editor of the journal "Venezia Arti", deputy director of the Centre for Studies in Russian Art and executive director of the Summer School "Contemporary art and curatorship: from documenta to the Biennale". He obtained fellowships from National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow (2013) and GWZO, Leipzig (2015; 2017). He is currently researcher within the project "On the Eve of Revolution. The East German Artist in the 1980s" at the Getty Research Institute and Visiting Fellow in the Research Group "Ethico-Aesthetics of the Visual" at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz - Max-Planck-Institut. His first book Arte sovietica alla Biennale di Venezia (1924-1962) was published in 2020 with Mimesis. His second book Unblocking the Blocs. Intertwined Art Practices in Divided Europe (1956-1972) is forthcoming in 2024 with Böhlau in the series “Das östliche Europa. Kunst und Kulturgeschichte”. He is also working on a book on the role played by art critic Enrico Crispolti in disseminating Russian and Soviet art in Italy.

For further information please contact Aleksandra Dimitrova at aleksandra.dimitrova@khi.fi.it