The Other Transatlantic is attuned to the brief but historically significant moment in the postwar period between 1950 and 1970 when the trajectories of the Central and Eastern European art scenes on the one hand, and their Latin American counterparts on the other, converged in a shared enthusiasm for Kinetic and Op Art. As the axis connecting the established power centers of Paris, London, and New York became increasingly dominated by monolithic trends including Pop, minimalism, and conceptualism another web of ideas was being spun linking the hubs of Warsaw, Budapest, Zagreb, Buenos Aires, Caracas, and Sao Paulo. These artistic practices were dedicated to what appeared to be an entirely different set of aesthetic concerns: philosophies of art and culture dominated by notions of progress and science, the machine and engineering, construction and perception. This book presents a highly illustrated introduction to this significant transnational phenomenon in the visual arts.

An insatiable Hunger for Life Clenched, raw and of a pressing urgentness: Chaïm Soutine’s expressive paintings are testimonies to a sense of human vulnerability and an existence on the margins of society. Intensely coloured, his meaty impasto portraits are thrown onto the canvas with broad brushstrokes, his agitated, frenetic landscapes and the paintings of slaughtered animals are expressions of an intense hunger for life and, at the same time, a deep alienation in an unsteady world that offers no support. Despite the recognition his work received, Soutine remained an outsider throughout his life, a stranger to the social manners of his adopted home in France. This catalogue focuses on the early masterpieces and series created between 1919 and 1925: Under the overarching theme of emigration and uprooting, the contributions reveal the traces of Soutine’s Jewish origins in his work, illuminate the significance of his motifs from the fringes of society as well as of blood and animal carcasses as metaphors; and show the influences of Soutine’s art up to the present day.

One of Poland's most important and independent postwar artists, Andrzej Wroblewski (1927-57) in his short life created his own highly individual, suggestive, and prolific form of abstract and figurative painting that continues to inspire artists today. This volume offers a stunning presentation and thorough re-evaluation of his work and its legacy in the international context of art history. Offering an insightful picture of the world of postwar painting in communist Europe, and highlighting Wroblewski's political engagement, the book helps us to understand the immensely evocative vision of war and oppression that he created. This close look at a painter and a period that are of growing interest for international art historians will serve to further cement Wroblewski in the postwar pantheon.

The work of Slovak sculptor Maria Bartuszova (1936-96) was first presented to international audiences in Kassel in 2007. Although her art has appeared in influential exhibitions and been included in prestigious contemporary art collections, up until now, she has yet to receive the widespread recognition she deserves. Dziewanska's book offers distinct perspectives on Bartuszova's work from renowned international critics in an effort to increase our awareness of her sculptures. Working alone behind the Iron Curtain, Bartuszova was one of a number of female artists who not only experimented formally and embarked intuitively on new themes, but who, because they were at odds with mainstream modernist trends, remained in isolation or in a marginalized position. Revealing her dynamic treatment of plaster-a material that, from a sculptor's point of view, is both primitive and common-the book deftly reveals how Bartuszova experimented with materials, never hesitating to treat tradition, accepted norms, and trusted techniques as simply transitory and provisional. Offering a much-needed history of a vibrant body of work, Maria Bartuszova: Provisional Forms is an important contribution to the literature on great female artists.

Thanks to its very nature, performance enters into natural dialogue with art, new media, politics, and the social sphere as a whole. Always happening in the here and now, and with a unique freedom and openness to the unknown, performance is a medium with a special ability to question its own subjects, materials, and languages. As a result, it is often best reflected in the dynamic character of contemporary art and contemporaneity in the broadest sense of the word. Points of Convergence explores these ideas and investigates critical approaches to performance, ultimately aiming to stimulate new discussion between theorists and practitioners. With twelve essays by leading figures in the field of performance arts, this illustrated volume is structured in two parts. The first, authored by academics in the discipline, features an introduction to key areas of scholastic research. The second part, authored by curators and other researchers, then focuses on an account of individual traditions of performance. Taken together, the contributions identify new possibilities for interaction between the theoretical aspects of performance art and the ways performance plays out within local contexts.

This book considers the oeuvre of Ion Grigorescu, one of the most charismatic and original artists from the former Eastern bloc, who until 1989 worked in relative isolation and whose art reflects his search for a place within an extremely oppressive political system. Grigorescu, born in 1945 in Bucharest and educated as a painter, was one of the first Romanian conceptual artists and advocates of anti-art, postulating a radical consolidation of artistic activities with quotidian life. He is the creator of numerous films, photographic series, and actions recorded on film, as well as drawings and collages that documented both his private life and the passage of the Romanian people from life under communist regimes to the realities of expansive capitalism. The retrospective understanding of his art presented here offers much more than just another lost chapter in the history of the Central European avant-garde - Grigorescu's work is revealed to be singular, introducing religious and spiritual motifs into conceptual art and demonstrating his conviction that political crises are rooted in a crisis of the spirit.