A View From Bulgaria of the 1960s Art in France Cover Image
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Погледът от България към изкуството във Франция през 1960-те години
A View From Bulgaria of the 1960s Art in France

Author(s): Irina Genova
Subject(s): History, Fine Arts / Performing Arts, Visual Arts, Recent History (1900 till today)
Published by: Институт за изследване на изкуствата, Българска академия на науките

Summary/Abstract: This article is part of a larger study, Bulgaria’s Perspective on France’s Art Culture in the 1960s. Rereading the ideological texts of the official critics at the time as well as the publications by relatively less engaged in ideological tasks critics and artists, we are convinced that there were differences in the reception of art beyond the Iron Curtain. Bulgarian artists under communism had come to realise that the West was not united. While internationally American art was generally associated with abstract painting and pop art, which were pejoratively called ‘avant-garde’ and ‘decadent’, the prestige of French art was approved by the Bulgarian audiences due to the glory of the Paris School in the decades prior to World War II (though that glory had started to fade after the war), the leftist artists, close to the French Communist Party, and the political works by Pablo Picasso such as Guernica, the Dove of Peace and Massacre in Korea. The participation of Bulgarian artists in the Biennale de Paris in 1959, 1961, 1963, 1965 and 1969 as well as in other international events, provided opportunities for travelling, gathering personal experience, and making comparisons. However, the incompatibility of the visual rhetoric on both sides of the Iron Curtain created insurmountable difficulties for the official exchanges.

  • Issue Year: 2016
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 332-345
  • Page Count: 14
  • Language: English, Bulgarian