Synopses & Reviews
Although cultural exchanges were named within the Council of Europe in the mid- 1950's as being second only in importance to the military as a tool for ensuring a stable and integrated Western Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War, European-led initiatives have generally been overlooked in the historiography of art of the immediate post-war period. Popularly remembered as the era of the United States' cultural "triumph", American Abstract Expressionism in particular is commonly identified as the cultural "weapon" by which that nation conquered Western European culture.
Synopsis
Challenging the dominant view that American Abstract Expressionism triumphed in Western Europe in the immediate post-war period, this book considers the proliferation of gesture painting there from a European perspective.
About the Author
Nancy Jachec is an independent scholar and currently holds a part-time research fellowship at the History of Art Department, Oxford Brookes University.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements * List of figures * Abbreviations * Introduction: the Idea of Europe * The Abstraction-Realism Debate and its background, 1938-1948 * Communism, anti-Communism, and government intervention at the Venice Biennale, 1948-1952 * The Biennali of 1954-1956: the politics of Realism * The 1958 Biennale: the collapse of the Ente and the rise of Gesture Painting as the 'European Idea' * The Biennali of 1960 and 1962: from European to global cultural policy * Gesture Painting in Communist Europe * Gesture Painting in Africa, Asia and Latin America * Epilogue: the 1964 Biennale: the end of Gesture Painting * Bibliography