Being Together: Alternative Forms of the Social in the Eastern Bloc

Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc, 1960s–1980s tells the story of how art flourished in the face of oppression through community, friendship and self-organization. Learn more about life behind the Iron Curtain, where artists forged friendships and found community despite living under repressive conditions.

Discover more and plan your visit to the Gallery to see the exhibition before it closes on Sunday, April 21, 2025.

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Between the 1960s and 1980s, many artists in Central Eastern Europe developed informal, intimate spaces to make and show art outside of state control. The alternative and underground art scenes in the Eastern Bloc encouraged collaboration and play, ways of working that did not always result in the creation of permanent artworks.

Activities like playing ping-pong, face painting or listening to music together could be artistic experiments in which the very act of sharing space and time became the work of art.

Networks of Exchange: Cross-Cultural Dialogues In and Out of the Bloc

The Iron Curtain was alternately impassable and porous, at times allowing for travel or enforcing isolation and immobility. Some countries such as Yugoslavia and Poland were more open; others, like East Germany and Romania, were more restrictive.

Artists embraced both government-sponsored and independent opportunities for movement and connection.

Even when artists couldn’t be together, they found ways to connect.

Official and unofficial networks of exchange facilitated cross-cultural dialogue within and beyond the Eastern Bloc.

Official exchanges were state-funded and often a tool of cultural diplomacy. Governments sent artists to the cultural centres of nations deemed aligned with communist values, including the USSR, China, Vietnam, Cuba and India.

A special display has been set up in the Gallery’s Library & Archives featuring catalogues of exhibitions from Central Eastern European countries that travelled to the People’s Republic of China from the 1960s to the 1980s.

You can browse the available catalogues online at home using the link below. Please note that this platform is best viewed on an iPad or tablet.

BROWSE THE CATALOGUE

On the other hand, artists generated their own networks of travel and communication. These efforts were subject to monitoring and surveillance by the authorities and participation entailed considerable risk.

Mail art—small-scale artworks circulated by postal service—captured the imagination of Eastern Bloc artists.

It expanded and democratized the making and distribution of art, allowing anyone to engage in the creative act.

Central Eastern European artists participated in mail art exchanges that spanned the globe, subverting official travel and communication restrictions.

Postal correspondence was routinely monitored by state authorities and artists came up with ingenious methods of subverting censors and official channels of communication.