The Borderlines of the Thaw: Graphic Art from the Federal Republic of Germany in Warsaw's "Exhibition Factory" (1956-1957)
The Borderlines of the Thaw: Graphic Art from the Federal Republic of Germany in Warsaw's "Exhibition Factory" (1956-1957)

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the essay is to delineate the political and artistic contexts of two exhibitions of graphic art from the Federal Republic of Germany held in the Central Bureau of Art Exhibitions, the main state art gallery in Warsaw (1956-1957). The historians consider the year 1956 - similarly to the years 1968 or 1989 - to be an important caesura in the political and social history on the global scale. In the history of modern art in Poland, the year 1956 is also perceived as a period crucial to changes in artistic life (Polish thaw). As the first show of West German artists in post-war Poland, the Exhibition of the Works of Graphic Artists from the Federal Republic of Germany opened in Warsaw on the same day when Nikita Khrushchev delivered his celebrated “Secret Speech” in Moscow (25 February 1956). The exhibition Poster Art in the Federal Republic of Germany was organized in 1957, after the events of the Polish October (1956). The idea to juxtapose art exhibitions with political events of their era follows contemporary reflections on the phenomenon of non-contemporaneity and on the heterogeneous nature of the visual time of art and exhibition histories.

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