So Close, So Far Away

A look at the art of 1950s Europe as a shared set of remarkable artistic achievements. This book examines the visual arts of the 1950s in Europe in the most open perspective. It works with an awareness of the common historical framework of European culture, providing a basis for understanding art in a new way, opposing existing stereotypes. It deals with many hitherto neglected themes, within the framework of which Czech art also belonged in a broad international sociocultural context. The period of the 1950s is traditionally associated with the growing confrontational politics of the major power blocs, forcibly transforming the geographically close into the infinitely distant. Countering the Cold War tendency to highlight cultural division, this book views the artistic production of this period as a shared accomplishment. Challenging traditional art-historical approaches, it uses three selected phenomena—abstraction, realism, and international exhibitions—to search with faith in the power of artistic production across political regimes for obscured but vital layers of art that form a multifaceted, interconnected whole. Its aim is not to create further binding interpretations, but to create space for new questions and visual experiences. Its structure corresponds to this. The text, confronted with four hundred and fifty reproductions of works lying, often unnoticed, in depositories, is intended to convey impressive personal encounters to the reader and to display the unbreakable invincibility of the fundamental values of European culture.