‘Cold War’

… the modern age (technological progress, standardization, etc.), and, on the other, a critique of cold, alienating functionalization. For the Hungarian film theorist Béla Balázs, who lived in Berlin between 1926 and 1931, the dispossessed human being had become a mechanized part of a system hostile to life. In a society increasingly under the sway of the capitalist imperative of rationalization, the transformation of man into a passive thing, his reification, became an essential feature of …

… and other mechanisms involved in the presentation and reception of Moore’s art during the Cold War. Mainly, however, it looks at his work’s influence on Czechoslovak sculpture in the second half of the 20 th century by presenting well-known and lesser-known artists from throughout the country who were inspired by his art, who further developed the way he worked with biomorphic shapes and internal and external space, or who experimented with sculptural forms somewhere between …

Contrary to popular belief, the Holocaust was not a taboo in the fine arts of early Socialist Hungary. In addition to numerous non-commissioned works of art, the subject also emerged within official memory politics. Curator: Daniel Véri (KEMKI) Graphic designer: Sarolta Ágnes Erdélyi, Hajnalka Illés Exhibiting artists: Tibor Barabás, Gyula Hincz, György Jovánovics, János Kass, …

… events, such as the Nuremberg trials, the Auschwitz trials, the Eichmann trial, and the Six-Day War had on shaping the memory of the Holocaust in the domain of fine arts and also to explore the impact of similar, local events. Another important point of focus is the role of national and transnational organisations, state authorities and unions of former prisoners, especially in the case of antifascist memory politics, as well as local Jewish communities and various Zionist organizations, …

The conference examines the memory of the Holocaust in fine arts within the Eastern Bloc from 1945 until the end of the 1960s.  Organised by KEMKI’s Research Department (Daniel Véri) and Freie Universität Berlin’s Kunsthistorisches Institut (Agata Pietrasik). Supported by the Alfred Landecker Foundation. The conference is our second international event dedicated to the …