The Paris Biennial on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Case Studies of Totalitarian Spain and the Polish People’s Republic (La Biennale de Paris des deux côtés du rideau de fer. Études de cas de l’Espagne totalitaire et de la République populaire de Pologne)

In the framework of the seminar 1959-1985, au prisme de la Biennale de Paris

with Paula Barreiro-López (Universitat de Barcelona), Agata Pietrasik (Université libre de Berlin) y Piotr Słodkowski (Académie des beaux-arts de Varsovie)

INHA, Paris, Tuesday 12 June 2018, 17-20h
Galerie Colbert, Salle Vasari

This session aims to discuss the symbolic, cultural and political value of the Paris Biennale from the 1950s to the 1970s, and its reception in two totalitarian contexts on both sides of the Iron Curtain. On the one hand, Agata Pietrasik and Piotr Słodkowski will propose a critical analysis of the Paris Biennale in the Polish press from the late 1950s and 1960s, situating this event in relation to the fluctuating political climate of the time and the local debates on the status of modern art. On the other hand, Paula Barreiro-López will focus on the study of interactions between the Francoist institutions, the artists and the Biennial, in order to understand the position of this event (and its instrumentalisation) in the context of the regime’s cultural policies, as well as the emergence of movements that were hostile to the dictatorship and struggles for the construction of modern art in Spain.

Free entrance

Institut national d’histoire de l’art
2, rue Vivienne ou 6 rue des Petits Champs
75002 Paris

More information: https://www.inha.fr/fr/agenda/parcourir-par-annee/en-2018/juin-2018/la-biennale-de-paris-des-deux-cotes-du-rideau-de-fer.html

Image: Josep Ponsatí, Pièce gonflable,  exhibited in 1973.