Required Reference to the Soviet Model

7 Historiography has provided us with a full description of the early 1950s, when the desire to impose a Soviet model was at its strongest. [6] As far as the GDR is concerned, the facts are well known, starting with the creation in February 1947 of the Soviet Palace of Culture in the heart of East Berlin, which increasingly showed Soviet artists. Then came the launch of Zhdanovian campaigns (found in all countries in 1950–1951) [7] and the organization of the Third National Exhibition in Dresden in March 1953, where the jury excluded all well-known East German painters and replaced them with unknown artists who imitated the Stalinist style. The creation of an Association of Artists (Verband Bildender Künstler, or VBK) in 1952 has often been presented as a further sign of Sovietization. [8]Some practices were directly transposed from the Soviet Union to the GDR, as evidenced by the 1955 “Nachterstedt Letter,” an open letter supposedly written by workers in Nachterstedt in the GDR to remind artists of their duty but which in reality was a word-for-word translation of a letter published in 1954 in a Soviet magazine. [9] Following Soviet cultural policy, the “perpetuation of national heritage” (nationale Erbepflege) was encouraged and “cosmopolitism” condemned. The model of art as “national in form and Socialist in content” meant that nationalism and allegiance to the USSR could be combined.

8 It should be made clear that ordinary references to the USSR in the archives often denote less real recognition of the USSR’s role than an internal rationale. To refer to the USSR was a way of displaying political docility or of making certain demands. Praise for the perfect organization of the Soviet art world was often used to make a claim for additional funds.

A Divested Model

9 It soon becomes clear that the vast majority of artists in the GDR did not take up the Soviet model. Defiance toward this form of art following Stalin’s death can be found in the archives, with artists giving voice to their hostility. When in 1956, the Communist Party in Dresden surveyed artist opinion on Soviet painters, it concluded that the Soviet model was almost unanimously rejected, with the exception of the atypical interwar Realists Deineka and Petrov-Vodkin. [10]

10 Many reasons explain the model’s lack of success. In a society marked by Soviet military occupation, the East German art world remembered when their collections were taken away, especially the Dresden museum collection, which was not returned until 1957. Moreover, in the 1950s, the German experience of Soviet art was limited to art shown in the GDR. This was post-1945 Stalinist realism, a period during which academicism was triumphant, even though it was far from universally endorsed within Soviet artistic circles. [11]  Artists had a somewhat distant view of Soviet art, especially since between 1933 and 1945, very few German painters spent a period of exile in the USSR. [12] A study of Soviet exhibitions in the GDR in the 1950s shows that the model was illustrated by highly academic and little-known Soviet painters, who exhibited a few paintings before disappearing from the artistic landscape. In an art world still attached to notions of individuality and artistic journey, the Soviet model seemed to entail a series of unknown names producing uniform art. [13]  An additional reason, which should not be underestimated, was economic. The USSR did not buy works from satellite countries. It was thus not really worthwhile for artists to take up an art form based on the Soviet model.

11 However, the main reason for rejecting this model was the very aesthetics of Stalinist realism. Academicism was off-putting both in form and in the politics behind the form. This was a naturalism with warm colors, full and well-outlined shapes, displayed in a space constructed according to the rules of art—signs of a desire for order concealed behind a facade of optimism. The politics of the image were underscored by the composition, usually constructed around figures of Stalin, Lenin, or some other party member. The Soviet model therefore disturbed them because of its focus on authority and a kind of relationship with power. The report of a conversation with an official on the Regional council (Rat des Bezirkes) that took place in Weissensee, East Berlin in January 1961 is evidence of this. [14] Artists spoke of “the poor quality of Soviet art, which was considered by all as flat, academic naturalism, a nineteenth-century type of art in the manner of Anton von Werner.” This reference to von Werner (1843–1915) is interesting. Werner was a painter who celebrated the proclamation of the Empire in 1871 and Bismarck’s power and was a great defender of the Prussian Academy of Art. In effect, Werner created hieratic realism—painting of and for authority—that defined an idea of politics that was distant and inaccessible and centered on “great men” involved in political rituals.

12 The official continued his report of his 1961 conversation in Weissensee as follows:

13

Although the [East German] painter Ronald Paris was present at the great exhibition of Russian art in Moscow in 1960, he did not deny these incredible lies. I myself was at the Moscow exhibition and I stressed that we could not speak like that about Soviet art; that only a few painters spoke against the progress of Socialist [r]ealism. It was only then that Paris finally admitted to having seen many excellent paintings.

14 Without knowing whether Paris succumbed to pressure or whether he did indeed think that there was interesting work in Moscow, we can still conclude that consensus grew in the GDR over the poor quality of Soviet art. The trauma of Stalinist realism in the early 1950s drove artists away permanently from any work coming from the USSR, including Communist artists such as Ronald Paris.

The Platforms of Moscow and Leningrad

15 Should we then conclude that the USSR played a marginal role in East German artistic life? When studying the destination of artists’ delegations in the archives of the Association of Artists, [15] we notice that in 1973, fourteen delegations went to the USSR in contrast to seven to Poland, six to Hungary, three to Romania, and two to Bulgaria. In 1987, the USSR was still the main destination, with twenty delegations of 350 people, whereas fifteen delegations of 70 went to Bulgaria, twelve delegations of 100 to Poland, and eight delegations of 150 to Hungary. [16] These numbers only measure travel organized by the association, but it did control most travel abroad; the association obtained the documents required for travel abroad and paid for travel costs.

16 The figures show that East Germans went to the USSR frequently, more precisely to Moscow and Leningrad. These cities seem to have been places for exchanges and platforms for Communist artists to meet. In a report made in 1971, an artist from Dresden who went to Leningrad [17] wrote that he visited studios and met interesting artists who “belong to the generation that has already achieved new quality and that is not satisfied with the tradition of the 1950s.” However, he particularly insisted on the fact that the trip enabled him to meet Mexican, Cuban, Italian, and Polish artists. “We were all remarkably in accord politically, and even though we have different ideas, we were able to discuss them amicably.” Unfortunately, he did not say what these “different ideas” were, but his report shows that there was an exchange of political and artistic ideas going on in Leningrad.

17 The role of platforms became even more important once the “thaw” began. This was a period when artists were looking for new forms of Socialist realism, beyond Stalinist realism. The art historian Susan E. Reid has focused on international activity in Moscow during the Khrushchev era, when the concept of peaceful coexistence was introduced. The 6^th World Festival of Youth in 1957 showed very different work, some of which had no connection at all with the Communist project. [18] Following the exhibition “Art in Socialist Countries” held in Moscow in 1958–1959, important discussions took place about the concept of realism. At this exhibition, the Poles showed non-figurative work, which not only offended Soviet authorities, who regretted the freedom they had allowed each country in the bloc for the exhibition, but led to a redefinition of realism. [19] In this work of redefinition, the Soviets (primarily the art critic Nina Dmitrieva) were particularly interested in interwar German realism, the thinking of Bertolt Brecht, and what had been written a few years earlier in the GDR. The interwar discussions on realism led to new interpretations in the GDR in 1955–1956, especially from Herbert Sandberg and Wolfgang Hütt, whose article “Realism and Modernity” in Bildende Kunst (Plastic Arts) in October 1956 was often quoted by the Soviets. New ways of speaking about modernity and realism were thus discussed in Moscow (and subsequently in the other Eastern European countries) based on elements from the GDR. [20 ]It is important to understand how new the declaration made in 1959 by Sergei Gerasimov, President of the Union of Soviet Artists, really was: “It is time to define the art of Socialist realism internationally.” The USSR then showed figurative experiments created outside of the Soviet bloc: Diego Rivera and Pablo Picasso were exhibited in 1956 in Moscow, the Italian Renato Guttuso in 1961, and Fernand Léger in 1963.

Prestige of Realismo

23 In 1956, the GDR published in German the first study on Renato Guttuso by the British writer John Berger. [26] However, beyond this (past and current) evidence, it is the work itself that best demonstrates the interest shown in Realismo. One of the most striking examples is the painting Neuererdiskussion, made in 1969 by Willi Neubert, an artist from Thale, which soon became a canonical East German work. [27] It ostensibly makes reference to La Discussione, a 1960 painting by Renato Guttuso, bought by London’s Tate Gallery in 1961. [28] There is the same conversation scene shown from a slightly higher angle, the same composition around a white diagonal separating the speakers, the same way of integrating symbols unrelated to the scene in a kind of collage (newspapers in Guttuso, geometrical symbols in Neubert). Willi Neubert only knew Renato Guttuso’s painting from reproductions since the painting had never left London and he had never been to England. The nearest work by Guttuso seen by Neubert was a wash drawing exhibited in the GDR in 1968. However, the drawing did not influence him a great deal since its supple lines did not interest him. He also did not reproduce any colors from Guttuso’s painting (or its reproductions). It was the composition that clearly fascinated him, the staging of the discussion and its difficulties, one of the most creative themes in Communist art. Neubert wanted to show that he shared a common problem with Guttuso, namely how to represent a verbal confrontation visually. Neubert’s painting was sent to Sofia for the exhibition of “Painting from Socialist Countries” in 1973, which aimed to raise the profile of artistic exchanges between Italy and the GDR. As for Guttuso, he was attending to his relationship with the USSR. [29]

24 The spread of the Italian brand of realism in the GDR was, above all, the result of the work of one artist, Gabriele Mucchi (1899–2002), a painter from Milan, who lived in the GDR for many years and was a professor in East Berlin and Greifswald from 1956 to 1963. Seeing the works themselves and not only their reproduction was an essential step in creating a model. In 1968, the Ministry of Culture, the Academy of Arts, and the National Gallery of Berlin organized a large retrospective of Renato Guttuso’s work, which went to East Berlin and Leipzig. In an interview in 2008, [30]  an artist from Chemnitz stated that this exhibition was the most important he had ever seen in the GDR and that he had been particularly struck by the formal innovations, the particular construction of space, the wide range of reds, and the line work that “partitioned” [31] the different sections of the painting. We should note that the Guttuso retrospective was followed a few months later by one on André Fougeron, which also went to East Berlin, Weimar, and Dresden, before going to Moscow and Leningrad. In the Soviet bloc, Italian realism and the realism of French Communists were often considered together.

25 Italian and French Socialist realism was probably attractive to the East Germans because it created contemporaneity, a connection with the present and with reality, which eluded Stalinist realism. It showed the bitterness of the class struggle, far removed from the forced optimism of the Soviet model. Similarly, it managed to express both the painful memory of World War II and contemporary anti-Fascist struggles. The Communist political apparatus also was in favor. Italian and French artists showed their political loyalty and were creating an explicitly Communist art form, in contrast to a Picasso, who no doubt was a constant reference for all artists, but whose work, in the eyes of many Communists, did not express sufficient commitment to the cause. [32] Italian and French painters were in any case more zealous than their East European colleagues in showing support for the “powers that be.” Gabriele Mucchi was one of the few well-known painters to agree to show the June 17, 1953, uprising as the East German authorities wanted it shown, i.e., as an attempted Fascist coup. [33] The Italian example was often used by the East German authorities to bring its own artists to order. Thus in 1955, when the Dresden regional council was in conflict with artists, it quoted Palmiro Togliatti’s words from the opening of an exhibition in Bologna: “These images are incomprehensible and foreign to those for whom you wish to paint. You are mistaken, and who can liberate you from this error but us?” [34]

Modernity of Mexican Muralism

26 Mexico was the other model of realist modernity for the GDR. Modernism was manifest in the huge mural works, which not only took account of a spectator on the move and of a multiplicity of perspectives but also used innovative techniques, including working on concrete or cement and using pyroxylin, coloring agents, industrial spray guns, or photographic projectors. [35]

27  

28 In the GDR, Mexican modernity was epitomized by Diego Rivera and David Siqueiros, and additionally by José Orozco, who died in 1949 and had traveled to Europe less often. Artists traveling to the GDR played a vital role in their art becoming a model. Diego Rivera’s visit in 1956, a year before his death, was a major event in East German artistic life. The visit was preceded by a major exhibition in Berlin and followed by the publication of a monograph, [36]  which provided the opportunity for reformulating certain Communist artistic principles, such as “art is propaganda or it is not art.” Diego Rivera visited most public works sites in East Berlin and therefore appears in regional council archives, [37]  such as a factory in Pankow that was hesitant to continue financing a mural painting and that was visited by Rivera. Rivera assessed the drawings, recommended certain modifications, and backed continuing with the work, and the financing was subsequently renewed. It is not possible to know what Rivera’s modifications were, but a direct intervention did occur. However, it would seem that Rivera had a poor opinion of East German art. Herbert Sandberg, an artist highly committed to the internationalization of East German art, reported in his memoir, published in 1987, that Rivera was supposed to have said: “If you want to breathe life into walls, why do they look as if there were in a cemetery?” [38]

29 Invited to Moscow in 1955, David Siqueiros had no hesitation in publicly criticizing Stalinist realism; as a result, the planned publication of his speech did not go ahead. This did not stop him from being highly popular, and there was a huge movement of solidarity in Eastern countries when he was imprisoned in Mexico between 1960 and 1964. Siqueiros went on an official visit to the GDR in 1970. His speech at the East Berlin Academy of Arts was published in German in Bildende Kunst and broadcast widely, and it can be found in the archives of most local sections of the Association of Artists. [39]  In it, Siqueiros reviewed certain guidelines of Communist art: the creation of art for the people, and a predilection for so-called popular art forms, i.e., murals and graphic works. He went back over the history of the Popular Art Workshop in Mexico. He also spoke about current research, including technical problems in mural painting, preservation of pigments, and constraints due to humidity. He seemed to want to establish relations with the GDR over the following: “I have found here in the GDR signs of fruitful research on new processes and new materials for exterior work—these results are to be applauded.” [40] 

30 As was the case with the Italians and the French, using Mexican art as a model was the result of action by a few East Germans. As early as the late 1940s, the plastic artist Gert Kaden championed the art he discovered in Mexico and Cuba during his exile from Nazism. It was he who organized the second national exhibition in Dresden in 1949 under the umbrella of mural painting. He was one of the main informants of the Soviet secret service and later of the GDR political police (Staatssicherheit), and his reports on his colleagues in Dresden show that he considered his activity as an informer as service to his project of promoting realism from abroad and denouncing a lack of internationalism. The second artist to promote Mexican art in the GDR was José Renau, a Spanish republican who went into exile in Mexico in 1939 and settled in the GDR in 1958. In Mexico, he worked on the site of David Siqueiros’s Portrait of the Bourgeoisie, and used pyroxylin on cement. When he arrived in the GDR, he was asked to created large murals in a new neighborhood of Halle, Halle-Neustadt, from 1970 to 1974. Using local materials—the works were made on Meissen ceramic tiles—he created monumental works immediately reminiscent of Mexican muralism that reproduced its staging of energy and integrated the viewer’s moving gaze.

31 Italian, French, and Mexican art, to which should be added work by the Belgians Frans Masereel and Roger Somville, was therefore an active model embraced by artists in the GDR rather than the Soviet model. When an East German art critic wrote a report on an exhibition she saw in Sofia in 1970, minutely describing each work over nine long pages, she drew frequent parallels with this common heritage: a particular engraving on linoleum “followed Fernand Léger’s late work,” a woodcut “was reminiscent of contemporary Mexican art,” and another “effectively re-appropriated the ideas of the Belgian artist Frans Masereel.” [41]

32 It is not simply a question of finding formal borrowings but of understanding how artists wanted to visualize a political project and to show a form of internationalism in their art. Repeating models from abroad was not seen as an attempt to liberalize or pluralize artistic life. Let us not forget that the highly orthodox David Siqueiros published an essay in 1945 with the explicit title “There is No Other Way but Ours.” Formal references had to be understood as a visual strategy for representing the international life of Communist painting.

Renewal of Realism from Abroad

34 Political unrest in Western Europe before and after 1968 breathed life back into the principles of Communist art, even though young artists did not necessarily belong to Communist parties. In Western Europe, some artists’ groups that were interested in art’s social objectives were politicized back toward figurative painting. Figuration narrative (Narrative Figuration) and the Malassis cooperative in France, or the Spanish group Equipo Crónica (Chronicle Team) were of interest to East German artists. However, information about these groups was only available in articles in the East German press, [42]  and this work was not shown physically in the GDR. However, from the perspective of East German artists, this work perpetuated thinking about realism in the wake of the French Communist painters of the 1950s, a trend confirmed by the history of art at the time. [43]  In 1981, during the exhibition of East German art at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, a painter from Halle insisted on visiting André Fougeron, which is evidence of the regard in which he was still held. [44] She reported back that he was in the midst of a great creative period, and that she had carefully looked at large figurative paintings in his studio and compared them to work by Figuration Narrative.

35 The relationship with figurative political painting from West Germany was both more direct and more complex. The work of the Munich group Tendenzen (Trends), created in 1960 and led by Oskar Schellemann, came to the GDR. Schellemann promoted the realism of unrest, and in 1968 joined the DKP (Deutsche Kommunistische Partei, German Communist Party). The group was, in fact, financed by the East German government, who purchased many works [45] in order to show that realist art did exist in the FRG (Federal Republic of Germany, or West Germany). The amount of control the East German government had on the activities of the Tendenzen remains to be determined. An initial exhibition was devoted to it in 1966 and traveled between East Berlin, Halle, and Rostock, with a second one held in 1976, which traveled between East Berlin, Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz), and Weimar.

36 In 1965, to provide a showcase for new realism from abroad, the Intergraphik festival was established in East Berlin, to take place every three years. At the 1980 Intergraphik, 615 artists from 54 countries exhibited 1,600 works. The festival welcomed graphic work from every country in the Soviet bloc and provided a large amount of space for what was called “progressive art” from other countries. Significant space was given to art from Latin American countries, and it was during this festival that East Germans discovered post-1959 Cuban art, which gained great legitimacy. As a report declared, “A study of contributions from all Socialist countries shows that Cuban engravings are the most successful at expressing the struggle of revolutionary unrest.” [46]  One of the most important events at each Intergraphik was the “International Bazaar of Solidarity,” at which work from all invited countries was sold. In 1976, 1,915,653 Marks were spent at this sale. [47] In contrast to other nearby festivals, which were rapidly depoliticized, such as the Baltic Biennale in Rostock, the Kraków Festival of Graphic Art, and the Brno Graphic Art Biennale, the Intergraphik pursued the ambition of creating political art, often in the service of the great causes of the time (Vietnam, Chile, the missile site installations in West Germany). Realism remained at the heart of their concerns, as they now explored the use of images from the mass media (photography, television). The government evidently used the festival to counteract the Western policy of isolating the GDR. The effects of this international meeting on East German artistic life were not negligible, and it is surprising to discover echoes of the Intergraphik even in the work of admirers of artwork from countries outside the GDR. Chili 73, the woodcut by Lothar Kittelmann (Document 1), a mechanic in Karl-Marx-Stadt, whose name is frequently found on the list of participants in the international bazaars of solidarity, clearly echoes the Latin American art shown in East Berlin.

37 The official art media ensured that now-forgotten realist work received great visibility. In 1975, Bildende Kunst, for example, devoted a long piece to the heirs of Italian realism, the West German progressivists, Communist art in Africa, and proletarian artists in the United States. [48] The aim was the same as before: to show international solidarity by exhibiting art that was distinct from that of the great Western European and North American art centers.

Exchanges with “Fraternal Countries”

38 From the 1960s, exchanges with the fraternal countries of Eastern Europe became institutionalized and are thus more evident in the archives. Associated economic flows also show up at the same time. For example, details about the organization of an exhibition of artists from Halle in Bulgaria are followed by the list of prices at which these paintings should be sold (these varied from 40 to 2,500 Marks depending on the public). [49]

39 In the 1980s, the large GDR industrial combines organized international meetings, called “open air,” between fraternal countries. These aimed to have young artists from different countries work together for several weeks. In 1986, the Buna combine thus brought together five artists from the GDR, one from Bulgaria, one from Poland, and one from Hungary for three weeks to “work on the problem of representing the immediate work environment and the industrial landscape.” [50]  At the end of this period, the work was exhibited in the company’s gallery, and each artist had to gift a work to the combine. Here again, the source does not enable us to know more. In the absence of the drawings and engravings made, we cannot know whether there were formal connections between the works.

Doc. 1. Lothar Kittelmann, (1973), Woodcut, 64 cm x 22 cm, Kunstfonds Beeskow

Doc. 1. Lothar Kittelmann, (1973), Woodcut, 64 cm x 22 cm, Kunstfonds Beeskow

40 However, it is possible to read in the archives that these exchanges provided opportunities for reflection over common concerns. In a 1972 report on a visit from a delegation of Soviet artists to Halle, a painter listed the problems he discussed with the delegation: [51] methods for teaching art to children, content in art schools, and ways of exhibiting contemporary work compared to old work, or the relationship between art and applied arts:

41

We spent a lot of time talking about goals and the organization of popular artistic creation (künstlerische Volksschaffen), which is always confused with popular art (Volkskunst). I managed to explain the difference through the use of several examples.

42 There was thus an exchange on the ways of looking at artistic creation by non-professionals: as art equal to that of professionals or revealing the social status of its creator.

43 Some meetings between artists from fraternal countries led to discussions about difficult issues, such as the rejection felt by artists trying out new ideas. During an exhibition from Socialist countries in Szeged in Hungary in 1967, Hungarian delegates told of the booing that accompanied the inauguration of a public statue. [52]  It was then the turn of delegates from other countries to acknowledge that they were not able to grasp the aesthetic tastes of the people.

44 Institutionalized and regular relations with fraternal countries allowed some artists to look beyond their country’s borders for answers to the questions that concerned them. Thus, Christa Krug, an artist employed by Leuna, an industrial combine near Halle, organized an exhibition in May 1974 in Tarnów, Poland as part of the twinning between the Félix Dzerjinski factory and Leuna. [53]  The official from the regional council, who accompanied the East German delegation to Tarnów reported that not only had Christa Krug wanted groups of Polish workers to be brought to the exhibition but had also tried to organize “a discussion between our delegation and Polish artists and workers.” [54]  Christa Krug was highly involved in the difficult work of organizing discussions about works of art in Leuna, and it was she who notably presided over commissioning committees at which artists and employees held talks. She then tried to find out how these discussions went in another Socialist context. Yet, the report on the Tarnów exhibition expresses disappointment:

45

My impression is that the Polish correspondent did not take our request to have talks with workers seriously. She declared once again that Polish artists painted as they saw fit—whether realistically or abstractly.

New Methods for Organizing International Artistic Exchanges

46 However, the major characteristic of the 1970s and 1980s remains the marginalization of realist models. The creation of models was not sustained by as strong a political will, unlike in the 1950s. There was a tentative shift in the 1960s, becoming more definite in the 1970s, in the goals assigned to art and therefore to international artistic exchanges. The ideological dimension was dampened. The desire to participate in changes in social relationships and show international solidarity through art became secondary. There was increased tolerance in the GDR, as in the other Socialist countries, toward forms of artistic expression other than Communist art. The visibility given by the press to political realism should not conceal its weakness in the balance of artistic forces.

47 Through international artistic exchanges, the East German government now pursued other goals than the creation of Communist art. It wanted to open the GDR to the Western European art trade and to bring in foreign currency by selling art. This strategy bore rapid fruit, since as of 1977, the wealthy industrialist collector Peter Ludwig bought a great deal of work, soon followed by West German galleries. The GDR government also wanted to turn art into a showcase for the alleged liberalization of the political regime as well as make it a vehicle for the diplomatic legitimization of the GDR at a time when it was being integrated into the international political scene. [55]  Artists were one of the social groups who benefited most from a liberal veneer. Within East German society, this was one of the most mobile professions. Frequent stories about travel bans are, paradoxically, evidence of their mobility. International trade exchanges were now organized by the State Art Trade (Staatlicher Kunsthandel) established in 1974 under the authority of the Ministry of Culture. International exchanges were thus in the hands of specialized officials, which does not seem to have been the case in all Eastern European countries. In fact, during a trip to Bulgaria, an artist commented that the art trade was organized by the artists’ union itself. [56]

48 Opening up trade with the West also went along with the regionalization of art in the GDR. This was the time when local artistic schools were created, the best example being the “Leipzig School,” later copied by the “Halle School” and then by the “Berlin School.” These labels had a primarily commercial purpose: they were aimed at adding value to a group of artists on the Western European art market. The strategy, which was rarely admitted to, emerges in a counter-example: when the city of Karl-Marx-Stadt tried to understand why it was not able to sell its paintings to the West, the first explanation offered was that it had not managed to create a brand, a school. In 1985, the local artists’ union complained that it had not sold paintings in Oberhausen, a city near Essen, which housed one of the Ludwig museums, and decided to insist further on “the distinctive elements of its territory” in highlighting its art. [57]

49 In studying the flow of Communist art models, we should not overestimate the importance of international exchanges in East German artistic life. A nationalistic perception of art remained dominant, and the main models for artists in the GDR were the German artists who had come before them: German realism, expressionism, and “New Objectivity.” Many people in the GDR thought that José Renau’s frescoes were too Mexican, [58]  and art criticism made efforts to show the ways in which Willi Neubert’s painting remained more German than Italian. This nationalistic reading of work was encouraged by the design of international exhibitions, which juxtaposed sections from different countries without ever putting works together on transnational themes. At the international exhibition in Szeged in 1967, the official who wrote the report was mainly interested in the national characteristics revealed in each section. [59] Detaching art from a national perspective was even more difficult for countries inside the bloc because they maintained a relationship between art and nation that had been uninterrupted since the eighteenth century. Art was always defined as a field in which the nation expressed itself. “Great art” continued to be seen as the birthright of a “great nation.”

50 A nationalistic vision should not prevent us from looking for signs of international dialogue. Transnational flows occurred despite—or, more precisely, through—national definitions. Works of art no doubt took on the secular mission of expressing the nation, but they also participated in creating internationalism. Here, common ideology played a decisive role. Artists, who saw themselves as distinct, got together around similar ideological motivations: art as a weapon in the class struggle, art accessible to all, partisan art, materialist art, anti-Fascist art, and so on. In art as in all other fields, what did not belong to the same country wore a dual hat—that of the foreigner and that of the comrade in arms.

51 There was a need to construct another kind of universality to combat bourgeois and capitalist universalism, constructed around the class struggle and social relationships. This is what the art critic Wolfgang Hütt, the main defender of the renewal of realism in the GDR, who was expelled from the party in 1956 for his position in favor of the Hungarian insurgents, stated in 1967 to a West German audience in Ratingen:

52

In [r]ealism in Socialist countries, commitment, connection with the people, and acceptance of reality merge with openness to diversity in form and method. Even though it knows how to use the positive experiences of capitalist modernity, Socialist [r]ealism is the alternative to the modernist dilemma of the late bourgeoisie. [60]