Cultural Diplomacy and Informal Artistic Relations in East Central Europe in the 20th Century: A Global Perspective

1. Introduction

The contributors to this Special Issue engage in a critical debate on key questions arising from discourses on the history and socio-political foundations of international traveling art exhibitions and cultural exchange. This collection of essays reflects the rapid expansion of scholarship examining the staging of art exhibitions, along with curatorial practices, strategies, and tools, particularly in their socio-political and economic contexts (e.g., Altshuler 1994; Greenberg et al. 1996; Staniszewski 1998). As the renowned scholar in the field of exhibition history, Bruce Altshuler, emphasized, “[…] the study of exhibitions provides a fascinating route into art history. Here, the social, political, and economic forces that shape artistic production and distribution come together, exerting their various pressures on artists, critics, collectors, dealers, institutional players, and the art-viewing public” (Altshuler 2008, p. 11). Over the past two decades, exhibition history has not only become a well-established sub-discipline within global art history but has also challenged traditional disciplinary boundaries (e.g., Klonk 2009; Atkinson et al. 2022). It offers a parallel narrative to academic art history, intertwining with canonical historiographic discourse, shaping scholarly inquiry, and demonstrating the far-reaching impact of curatorial examination. This influence extends beyond the interpretation of artistic material on display to encompass the structuring of exhibition scenarios, temporalities and installation spaces, the communication methods, and immersive practices employed through various media and advanced technologies, as well as exhibition meta-critique, art criticism, and spectatorship (e.g., Basu and Macdonald 2007; Orišková 2013).

A domain that remains largely underdeveloped in this field is the investigation of exhibition policies enacted in East-Central Europe throughout the 20th century, especially up to the political threshold of 1989–1991. Nonetheless, several notable exceptions have emerged, such as the polyphonic narratives of Art Beyond Borders: Artistic Exchange in Communist Europe, 1945–1989 (Bazin et al. 2016); Globalizing East European Art Histories. Past and Present (Hock and Allas 2018); Entangled East and West: Cultural Diplomacy and Artistic Interaction during the Cold War (Mikkonen et al. 2019); State Construction and Art in East Central Europe, 1918–2018 (Chmielewska et al. 2022); and Plural and Multiple Geographies of Modern and Contemporary Art in East-Central Europe (Preda and Radomska 2024b). This Special Issue seeks to expand this study field by examining cultural diplomacy in East Central Europe and its global connections—with selected countries in North America, Latin America, and Asia—spanning from the interwar period through the Cold War’s bipolar division up to the political upheavals of 1989–1991.

The focus is on international, transnational, and transregional cultural exchanges initiated and enacted through bilateral or multilateral agreements between state agencies. Beyond cultural promotion, these presentations also served as instruments for building power relations, reflecting political, economic, and commercial interests. The thematic scope of this issue includes the strategies employed by both state-sponsored and private institutions in organizing traveling exhibitions across the region and beyond—extending to the United States, the USSR, and Argentina. Comparative insights are provided by examining China’s promotional strategies at art exhibitions in the Soviet Union, exemplifying interactions among communist political forces. Through an analysis of promotional agendas, we uncover how individual states manipulated and misappropriated art for propaganda purposes while also highlighting the role of memory politics and identity politics in curatorial narratives. Additionally, this issue explores unofficial international and interregional artistic interactions that influenced the cultural and social discourses in host countries.

It is worth noting that the genealogy of the term ‘cultural diplomacy’, which plays a central role in the discussions presented in this Special Issue, dates back to Thomas Jefferson’s 1785 letter to James Madison, as highlighted by Cynthia Schneider (Schneider 2006). Jefferson recognized “the potential for cultural expression to shape international opinion about the fledgling republic” (Schneider 2006, p. 191). While this early concept has since expanded to include political, economic, and commercial objectives, its relevance remains strong today and is widely employed across various fields within the political sciences, social sciences, and humanities (Hayden 2012).

The tool of soft power (Chitty 2017, pp. 9–36) being considered here is primarily touring art exhibitions, which serve to disseminate knowledge about the cultural specificity, artistic achievements, and the agency of cultural institutions active in the exporting country, as well as to promote its ideological priorities and foster political and economic inter-state cooperation. The analyses focus on both curatorial strategies employed in relation to export exhibitions and the critical reception of imported cultural events, which may be conditioned by the current cultural policy in the host country or prove subversive towards its official political narrative. The research presented in this issue traces the establishment of official initiatives, contrasting them with the efforts of independent intellectual and artistic circles (in Paris and Buenos Aires) that operate outside government control, including those engaged in theatrical performances.

2. Focusing on East Central Europe

Drawing attention to East Central Europe requires at least a brief consideration of the term itself, the geopolitical territories it is meant to designate, and the diverse historical narratives that have shaped its conceptualization throughout the 20th century. Since the 1960s, this notion has sparked an ongoing and largely inconclusive debate.1 Scholars working within a post-dependence research framework (Nycz 2014) argue that the region underwent a form of intra-European colonization during the 19th and 20th centuries. Piotr Piotrowski emphasized that East Central Europe shared the same epistemic and cultural framework as the West (Piotrowski 2015, p. 121). Drawing on Bojana Pejić (Pejić 1999, p. 20), he employed the term “Close Other(s)” to distinguish the region’s inhabitants from the “Others” of Europe’s overseas colonies—populations perceived as culturally distant from the colonizing powers (Piotrowski 2015, p. 121).2

This perspective is embedded in historical accounts of domination and exploitation within the region. Many East Central European countries and nations experienced subjugation by neighboring hegemons, including the Habsburg Empire, the German Empire, and Tsarist Russia. The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, and the defeat of the Hohenzollern and Osman dynasties led to a profound reconfiguration of Europe’s political landscape. Several independent nation-states emerged, though some lasted only about two decades before being occupied or annexed during World War II by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (Bernhard 2017). After the war, most East Central European countries fell under Soviet control, either as republics within the USSR or as satellite states. The region did not fully regain political independence until the fall of communism between 1989 and 1991.

Given the frequent political, social, and economic upheavals, as well as shifting borders, the region’s political instability has made the analysis of its cultural domain more complex than in countries with more stable political structures. As a result, the classification of East Central Europe in geocultural terms remains contentious. The region’s boundaries—and, by extension, the composition of its states—lack a universally accepted definition. Various interpretations exist, leading to multiple competing frameworks. In The Uses of Adversity: Essays on the Fate of Central Europe, Timothy Garton Ash underscores this ambiguity by identifying as many as sixteen different definitions (Ash 1989).

To briefly outline the most fundamental historical shifts in concepts related to Europe’s eastern frontiers, it is important to recall that ‘Central Europe’ originally referred to the multinational and multiethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire (Gryglewicz 1992, pp. 7–19). The term later came to encompass a group of countries that emerged after the dismantling of the Habsburg monarchy in 1918 (Feichtinger et al. 2003), coinciding with the fall of the Hohenzollern, Romanov, and Ottoman dynasties (Clegg 2006, p. 1). Meanwhile, the term ‘Mitteleuropa’ was employed by 19th-century German writers (Meyer 1955) and later revived in 1915 as a key slogan of Friedrich Naumann’s expansionist pan-German ideology (Droz 1960). This vision of a pan-German Reich aimed to establish an economically and politically unified Mitteleuropa stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic Sea, thereby contributing to the term’s long-standing negative connotation (Ther 2006). In art historiography, Mitteleuropa has acquired a neutral meaning only in the past three decades. Various interpretations of the concept were explored in Mitteleuropa: Kunst, Regionen, Beziehungen, an anthology edited by Krisztina Passuth (Passuth 1995). For instance, a redefined version of the term—distinct from its original 1915 meaning—reappeared in the title and content of Aspekte/Positionen—50 Jahre Kunst aus Mitteleuropa 1949–1999, an exhibition held in Vienna in 1999 (Hegyi 2000b). The notion also resurfaced in a more recent monograph by Lóránd Hegyi, Fragilité de la narration. Nouvelle approche à l’art contemporain, Mitteleuropa comme paradigme (Hegyi 2009).

Milan Kundera offered a perspective on Central Europe that was not strictly tied to territorial boundaries in his seminal essay Un Occident kidnappé ou la tragédie de l’Europe Centrale (Kundera 1983, pp. 3–22), a text that significantly shaped the debate on the region’s cultural identity in the 1980s. In this article, he argues that while post-1945 politics positioned Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary within Eastern Europe, their deep-rooted Western Christian traditions affirm their cultural belonging to the West. As a result, Kundera advocated for the term ‘Central Europe’ as a way to counteract the misleading label ‘Eastern Europe’.

Kundera’s argument not only challenged contemporary political categorizations but also reignited scholarly debates on the historical conceptualization of ‘Eastern Europe’. Originally emerging during the Enlightenment, the term ‘Eastern Europe’ replaced the Renaissance-era division of North versus South with a new dichotomy of West versus East. As Larry Wolff argues in Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization in the Mind of the Enlightenment (Wolff 1994), Western Europe, seeking to establish itself as the center of civilization, constructed an ideological contrast with the so-called ‘barbaric’ East. This notion persisted through successive generations of politicians, scholars, and travelers, shaping perceptions of the region. In the twentieth century, the term was further instrumentalized—first by Nazi ideology and later by Cold War geopolitics, where it became synonymous with the Eastern Bloc, a group of socialist satellite states under Soviet control, including the German Democratic Republic, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria, and Romania (Wolff 1994; Bideleux and Jeffries 1998; Zonnenberg 2006, p. 8). This post-war division, symbolized by the Iron Curtain, reinforced a binary perception of East versus West. By the late twentieth century, particularly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, this rigid framework began to dissolve. Some researchers argue that the region—once perceived as a cohesive socio-political and cultural entity—no longer exists in that form (Gržinić 2009). In fact, the term ‘Eastern Europe’ has increasingly been replaced by ‘post-communist Europe’, reflecting the systemic transformations that marked the region’s transition to democracy (Holmes 1997).

Nevertheless, interpreting the region through the post-Yalta binary division of political spheres provided a framework for cross-sectional cultural studies, such as Steven M. Mansbach’s Modern Art in Eastern Europe: From the Baltic to the Balkans, ca. 1890–1939 (Mansbach 1999). Using ‘Eastern Europe’ and ‘Central Europe’ interchangeably, Mansbach articulated his understanding of the region as encompassing the Baltic states, Poland, former Czechoslovakia, the successor states of Yugoslavia—including Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, and Macedonia—as well as Romania and Hungary. Similarly, Christoph Brockhaus and Ryszard Stanisławski, curators of the landmark exhibition Europa, Europa: Das Jahrhundert der Avantgarde in Mittel-und Osteuropa held in 1994 in Bonn, viewed ‘Central Europe’ and ‘Eastern Europe’ as complementary rather than opposing concepts (Stanisławski and Brockhaus 1994).

Defining ‘East-Central Europe’ is even more challenging, as both its geographical boundaries and socio-political connotations have shifted over time, conditioned by historical contexts and research perspectives (Paruch and Trembicka 2000, p.12). In some scholarly discourses, the term refers to the unrealized geopolitical concept of Intermarium, proposed by Józef Piłsudski, a key military and political leader of the Second Polish Republic. This plan sought to ensure the security and sovereignty of newly established nation-states after World War I by forming a bloc against the imperial ambitions of Germany and Soviet Russia. Envisioned as a region bordered by the Baltic, Adriatic, and Black Seas, Intermarium would have included Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia.3

Another approach to conceptualizing East-Central Europe arises from contemporary regional development theory. In its minimalist interpretation, this perspective identifies the macroregion as consisting of the ten post-communist states that joined the European Union on 1 May 2004 and 1 January 2007 (Kosiedowski 2008, p. 13). Political scientists continue to debate the region’s identity, often describing it as a bridge between East and West (Mazurkiewicz 2004, pp. 71–75). Generally, it includes post-communist states that were not part of the Soviet Union, though Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia are frequently treated as exceptions in academic discourse. Additionally, the western members of the Commonwealth of Independent States—Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine—are often considered part of the region (Roszkowski 2002).

While regional development theory defines East-Central Europe primarily through political and institutional criteria, other scholars offer broader cultural and historical interpretations. Andrzej Szczerski, for instance, in his book Transformation: Art in East-Central Europe after 1989, contends that the region consists of states that align themselves with the European community of free nations, bound by shared values derived from Greek philosophy, Roman law, and Judeo-Christian traditions. From this standpoint, it includes not only the Visegrad,4 Baltic, and Balkan countries but also former Soviet republics, such as Moldova, Belarus, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia (Szczerski 2018, p. 20).

As previously discussed, the diverse research perspectives adopted by scholars in the field have led not only to varying delineations and mappings of the analyzed region but also to divergent terminologies, as exemplified by major publications such as Krisztina Passuth’s Treffpunkte der Avantgarden Ostmitteleuropa 1907–1930 (Passuth 2003). More recently, the contributors to Plural and Multiple Geographies of Modern and Contemporary Art in East-Central Europe have positioned ‘East-Central Europe’ as a key analytical category, introducing new methodological approaches that intersect artistic discourse with ‘critical/radical geography’ informed by post-Marxist thought (Preda and Radomska 2024a, p. 1). While this collection primarily engages with theoretical reflections and post-communist art, its editors also examine the evolving terminology employed by scholars and curators throughout the 20th and 21st centuries (Preda and Radomska 2024a, pp. 10–14). Following Piotr Piotrowski’s approach, the above-mentioned volume underscores that the term ‘East-Central Europe’ inherently reflects the region’s history of internal political tensions and conflicts, as indicated by the hyphen separating its components.

3. Cultural Uniqueness of East Central Europe

Beyond the lack of consensus on how to map East Central Europe and what the proper terminology is to designate it, a longstanding debate persists over the region’s cultural specificity. More precisely, the question is whether the region has been a site for the development of distinct artistic codes. For some scholars, the cultural cohesion of the region—despite its national, ethnic, and religious diversity—remains an unquestionably fundamental value.

For example, the issue of idiosyncratic features in the art created in Central Europe has been addressed in Andrzej Turowski’s book Existe-t-il un art de l’Europe de l’Est? Utopies et idéologies (Turowski 1986). Building on this narrative, in his article The Phenomenon of Blurring, Turowski identifies the distinctive characteristics of post-World War I Central European art, focusing on avant-garde movements (Turowski 2002, pp. 362–73). He views Central Europe as a geocultural entity, emphasizing the hybridization of Western models within the region. Turowski explains how artists synthesized various—sometimes opposing—poetics and stylistics into new artistic idioms. He argues that the highly syncretic nature of Central European avant-garde trends is reflected in the nomenclature that highlights the complex genealogy of artistic phenomena. This is best exemplified by terms such as ‘cubist-expressionism’, ‘expressionist futurism’, and ‘spiritual fauvism’. Additionally, Turowski identifies a range of newly coined terms that capture the distinctive character of modernism in Central European countries, including ‘formism’, ‘unism’, ‘activism’, ‘poetism’, ‘integralism’, ‘cosmism’, ‘zenithism’, and ‘hipnism’, to name just a few (Turowski 1998).

On the other side of the artistic spectrum, traditionalist trends rooted in the ideology of restoring socio-political order after the Great War also gave rise to diverse terminologies aimed at distinguishing between the neorealisms and neoclassicisms developed in East-Central Europe and the French, Italian, and German models. These included terms such as ‘modern classicism’, ‘objective-realist art’, ‘vital classicism’, ‘noble realism’, ‘ethnographic traditionalism’, ‘archaic traditionalism’, ‘social realism’, ‘poetic realism’, and ‘civilism’ (Kossowska 2010a, pp. 7–31). The nuances in these terms reflect both the complexity and uniqueness of the cultural phenomena characteristic of the region.

Both the exhibition Central European Avant-Gardes: Exchange and Transformation, 1910–1930 (Benson 2002) and the collective volume Reinterpreting the Past: Traditionalist Artistic Trends in Central and Eastern Europe of the 1920s and 1930s (Kossowska 2010b) have highlighted the intricate network of cultural connections between artistic centers in this part of the continent, as well as the glocalization of artistic models transferred from dominant cultural hubs.

Andrzej Szczerski, for his part, advocates the thesis of a shared cultural core in East Central Europe, citing examples such as the architecture of the interwar period to illustrate this phenomenon (Szczerski 2010). He bolsters his argument by pointing to the region’s common historical heritage and referencing medieval political projects aimed at forming alliances and federalizing the countries within the region, including the dynastic policies of the Jagiellonians.

This idea of a shared historical and cultural foundation aligns with broader discussions on the region’s fluid and contested identity. In his aforementioned article, Milan Kundera captured the elusive nature of Central Europe by describing its location as “East of West and West of East”, emphasizing that “its borders are imaginary and must be drawn and redrawn with each new historical situation” (Kundera 1984, p. 35). Some researchers support Kundera’s diagnosis, pointing out that the shifting geopolitical and cultural borders are a key distinguishing feature of the region (Turowski 1986, p. 12; Dingsdale 1999, p. 204; Murawska-Muthesius 2021, p. 52). Additionally, Kundera viewed the region as “a realm inhabited by the same memories, the same problems and conflicts, the same common tradition” (Kundera 1984, p. 35). In a similar vein, some scholars regard East Central Europe as an imaginary construct (Hoptman 1995, p. 2; Hegyi 2000a; Forgács 2002; Gryglewicz 2006; Kiss 2009; Škrabec 2013), a space conceptualized in geopolitical terms, without fixed borders or easily defined features. However, they identify certain common cultural traits that reflect the region’s turbulent political history.

Broadly speaking, these defining characteristics include the national liberation movements of the 19th century, the restoration of states after World War I, the devastation of World War II, widespread resistance to the Soviet-imposed communist system, and, more recently, efforts at self-identification following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Additionally, East Central Europe has experienced racial and religious conflicts, the exploitation of nations and ethnic groups, and large-scale population migrations. The war trauma that has shaped the history of this multi-national, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious region—marked by shifting political regimes, evolving ideologies, and diverse economic conditions—has now been further deepened by Russia’s premeditated and unprovoked full-scale invasion of Ukraine, launched on 24 February 2022.

These shared historical traumas have conditioned not only the political and social landscape of East Central Europe but also its cultural consciousness. Tomasz Gryglewicz, for instance, maintained that the region’s sense of community existed only within the cultural sphere, characterizing it by a pervasive pessimism rooted in experiences of destruction, disintegration, and annihilation (Gryglewicz 2006, pp. 237–43). Similarly, Éva Forgács, in her article History Too Fast, contends that the persistent lack of political continuity in East Central Europe led to the fragmentation of artistic discourses and theory in the region (Forgács 2022). The instability of social and institutional frameworks stifled the full development of artistic movements, ideas, and visual languages. According to Forgács, the ever-changing political landscape—even within the same ideological system—became a defining feature of East Central European culture, shaping its artistic trajectory through continual disruption. Boris Groys, for his part, claims that what unites the diverse range of idiosyncratic artistic phenomena emerging from the region is “the common experience of Soviet-type communism” (Groys 2010, p. 18).

Conversely, some scholars investigating the cultural map of Europe caution against an essentialist approach to the region, arguing that it overemphasizes cohesiveness and creates artificial distinctions (Hock 2018, p. 7). Others prefer to speak of art produced in East Central Europe rather than idiosyncratic regional art, highlighting the diverse cultural traditions across its countries, including aspects “of both Western European and Asian influence” (Hoptman 1995, p. 7). Despite the Yalta order imposed on the region, the unique social and political conditions of Eastern Bloc states and the countries absorbed by the USSR led to distinct artistic developments, as Piotr Piotrowski argued in his groundbreaking book In the Shadow of Yalta: Art and the Avant-Garde in Eastern Europe 1945–1989 (Piotrowski 2009b; see also Forgács 2003, p. 93). Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius also challenged the all-encompassing vision of the region’s culture in her article Welcome to Slaka: Does Eastern (Central) European Art Exist? (Murawska-Muthesius 2004, pp. 25–40). Building on Piotrowski’s approach, she advocated for the recognition of multiple partial artistic and historiographical narratives.

More recently, Beata Hock, co-editor of Globalizing East European Art Histories: Past and Present, described East Central Europe as a heterogeneous yet interconnected space that, despite its diversity, shares historical characteristics that justify the use of terms like ‘East-Central Europe’ or ‘Eastern Europe’ without essentializing them (Hock 2018, pp. 7–9). However, a definitive conclusion about the region’s cultural identity—whether it is distinctly unified or ‘tessellated’—remains elusive.5

4. Exhibiting Regional Distinctiveness

A significant position in the debate on the cultural specificity of East Central Europe has been taken by cross-sectional exhibitions organized over the last decades both within and beyond the region. Some underscored the parallel development of artistic trends in East Central Europe and the West, while others, in contrast, portrayed local artistic production as distinct, rooted in its unique socio-political context, and separate from Western artistic discourses. While certain displays maintained a politically neutral stance, others were overtly ideological (Orišková 2013, pp. 7–18). The latter, often aligning with the concept of ‘strategic essentialism’ (Spivak 2006), refrained from scrutinizing the systemic mechanisms of ruling powers. Instead, they emphasized defensive, oppositional, and subversive responses to indoctrination and the political appropriation of culture under the communist regime. Many exhibitions held throughout the 1990s reflected the socio-political transformations in the region while also addressing the historical factors that had contributed to the absence of artistic phenomena from East Central Europe in the global market. Subsequent curatorial projects sought to dismantle the East–West dichotomy, foregrounding the cultural richness and creative potential of art produced ‘behind the Iron Curtain’.

However, despite the end of political oppression in post-communist countries, the fall of communism did not immediately trigger a surge of new creative concepts—although this does not imply that the region lacked artists who gained international acclaim. This perspective was emphasized by critics of the landmark exhibition After the Wall: Art and Culture in Post-Communist Europe (Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 1999), curated by Bojana Pejić and David Elliot, which examined the first decade following the socio-political transformations in Europe. The curators aimed to highlight the transition from artistic expressions shaped by local and regional conditions under communist regimes to themes of global significance, including diverse explorations of identity.

By contrast, the large-scale exhibition Interrupted Histories (Moderna galerija, Ljubljana, 2006), curated by Zdenka Badovinac, questioned the rigid East–West divide imposed by Cold War ideology. Using archival documentation of neo-avant-garde artistic movements active in East Central Europe during the 1960s and 1970s, the exhibition dismantled the overarching ‘grand narrative’ of the communist socio-political system. Instead, it prioritized the subjective ‘minor narratives’ of the region’s artistic protagonists, offering an alternative historical perspective that emphasized the ‘permeability’ of the Iron Curtain in enabling artistic exchanges. Similarly, the exhibition Les promesses du passé, 1950–2010. Une histoire de l’art dans l’ex-Europe de l’Est (Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2010), curated by Christine Macel and Joanna Mytkowska, challenged the Cold War-era division between the Eastern Bloc and the West. By presenting numerous examples of intercultural dialog and artistic exchange between the two spheres, it further undermined the binary opposition of East and West.

The geopolitical lens also influenced the curatorial frameworks of exhibitions, such as … on the eastern front. Video Art from Central and Eastern Europe 1989–2000 (Ludwig Múzeum, Budapest, 2010), which explored artistic transformations occurring in former Eastern-Bloc countries during the post-dependence transition. Another significant initiative was the IRWIN group’s East Art Map: A (Re)Construction of the History of Contemporary Art in Eastern Europe, launched in 2001 (Avgita 2013, pp. 19–35). Originally conceived as a web-based platform and an exhibition (East Art Museum, Hagen), the project was ultimately published as East Art Map: Contemporary Art and Eastern Europe (IRWIN 2006). It aimed to reconfigure the post-1945 European art landscape by integrating artistic phenomena that had remained isolated behind the Iron Curtain while also tracing developments in East Central Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall. By mapping internal artistic hubs, networks, and points of reference, IRWIN challenged the traditional West-to-East hierarchy of influence, instead proposing a dynamic model of artistic creation in East Central Europe. The project further interrogated the notion of ‘Eastern-Europeanness’—or even ‘Euro-Asianness’—raising questions about the region’s distinctive cultural identity.

Another significant exhibition, Gender Check: Femininity and Masculinity in the Art of Eastern Europe (Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, 2009/2010), curated by an international team under Bojana Pejić’s direction, interrogated how transnational and transregional concerns—particularly feminism and gender—were addressed within the cultural context of East Central Europe. While the socio-political backdrop of art produced in the region from the 1960s onward played a key role in the selection of works, the exhibition successfully positioned local art within a broader global discourse. This feminist perspective also informed, for instance, the collective monograph Working with Feminism: Curating and Exhibitions in Eastern Europe, edited by Katrin Kivimaa and Suzana Milevska (Kivimaa and Milevska 2012).

In addition to the previously mentioned exhibitions, several other important shows have engaged with the notion of a distinct cultural identity in the region. Notable examples include Beyond Belief: Contemporary Art from East Central Europe (Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1995, curated by Laura Hoptman), which investigated post-communist artistic practices; The Body and the East: From the 1960s to the Present (Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana, 1998, curated by Zdenka Badovinac), which examined the body as a site of artistic and political expression; and Aspects/Positions: 50 Years of Art in Central Europe, 1945–1999 (Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, 2000, curated by Lóránd Hegyi), which provided a critical overview of the region’s artistic diversity in the second half of the 20th century. Other significant exhibitions feature Privatisations: Contemporary Art from Eastern Europe (KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, 2004, curated by Boris Groys), which analyzed the evolving artistic landscape in response to economic and ideological transformations, and Living Art—On the Edge of Europe (Kröller-Müller Museum, 2006, curated by Nathalie Zonnenberg), which focused on East Central European art from the 1960s and 1970s. The latter reconstructed performances, installations, films, and site-specific works, positioning them both within the geopolitical context of the region and as parallel, complementary expressions to Western artistic trends.

5. East Central Europe (Instead of East-Central Europe)

Considering the varying research perspectives on the eastern part of the continent and the diverse ideological implications of terms such as ‘Eastern Europe’, ‘Central Europe’, and ‘East-Central Europe’, the contributors to this Special Issue have opted for ‘East Central Europe’ as a comprehensive designation for the region. This choice is based on the definition proposed by Oskar Halecki, a Polish historian with Austrian aristocratic roots. In the post-1945 period, Halecki conceptualized Europe as divided into four regions: Western, Eastern, West-Central (including territories historically linked to Germany), and the often-overlooked East Central Europe. As early as 1943, he emphasized that “[…] the ideal postwar organization of that part of Europe would be a federation stretching from Finland in the north to Greece in the south” (Halecki 1943, p. 57). Thus, East Central Europe embraces a large territory between Germany, Italy, Turkey, and Russia, or, alternatively, between the Baltic, Black, and Mediterranean Seas. It includes Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Czechoslovakia (now Czechia and Slovakia), Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia (now Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, North Macedonia), Albania, and Greece.

Halecki argued that the region of East Central Europe had never experienced true political or historical unity. Despite this lack of cohesion, the peoples of the region shared many common experiences, shaped largely by alternating periods of independence and subjugation under the control of powerful neighboring states. It is crucial to recognize that Halecki’s epistemic framework was deeply influenced by the geopolitical realities of the mid-20th century. The central argument in his most significant contributions on this topic, written in the 1950s, was that a liberated East Central Europe was vital to maintaining the balance of power across the continent, and that any hope for lasting peace could not be realized without the region being free from external domination (Halecki 1950, 1952).

Several decades later, Matthew Rampley critically responded to Halecki’s proposal in the editorial of the new journal Art East Central (Rampley 2021). However, he proposed a slightly broader conceptualization of the region’s identity than Halecki, extending its boundaries to include Austria and additional states along the Baltic littoral, thereby incorporating Sweden as well. In this Special Issue, we have also included Sweden and Austria in the discourse, acknowledging Vienna’s central role as the political, administrative, and cultural capital of the Habsburg Empire.

6. Dynamism of Interwar Traveling Exhibitions

Returning to the central theme of this collection of essays, it is important to highlight that the format of traveling exhibitions across Europe gained significant traction in the 1930s, driven by the political dynamics of the interwar period. This surge in exhibition activity was closely tied to the ongoing efforts of newly formed nation-states in post-World War I Europe to assert their identities. The interwar period was marked by a persistent search for the roots of national belonging and distinctive cultural features, as countries strived to strengthen their position in the reconfigured geopolitical landscape. This quest for ethno-symbolic self-definition was particularly evident in the art world, where cultural expressions often aligned with or were subordinated to official state policies—whether in democratic systems like France, totalitarian states such as Germany, Italy, and the USSR, or emerging authoritarian regimes like Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Austria, Poland, and the Baltic states.

Against this backdrop, the 1930s witnessed a significant expansion in the international circulation of art exhibitions, which became a key platform for nations to project their cultural identity on a global stage. These exhibitions were not merely artistic endeavors but strategic tools determined by political factors and cultural policies that extended beyond national borders. Often designed for export and organized by government agencies, they were hosted through bilateral or multilateral agreements and aimed to highlight national distinctiveness. As a result, the question of national identity played a crucial role in shaping both curatorial approaches and the critical discourses of the era, reinforcing the intersection of art, politics, and diplomacy in the interwar period (Kossowska 2017, pp. 67–317).

It is important to note that, alongside the well-organized circulation of exhibitions between the West and the East, several expositions featuring officially sanctioned art from East Central European nations were also exchanged within the region. As a result, exhibition venues were not limited to major cultural centers like Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Brussels, or Venice but also extended to Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Bucharest, Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn, and Moscow. These locations emerged as key hubs for the exchange of artistic experiences and the promotion of national cultural paradigms.

Budapest, in particular, gained recognition as a cultural capital. Hungarian audiences had the opportunity to view art from Austria (1925, 1935), Poland (1926, 1928, 1938), England (1926), Sweden (1926), Belgium (1927, 1937), France (1929), the United States (1930), China (1930, 1938), Norway (1931), Japan (1931), the Netherlands (1933), Denmark (1934, 1936), Italy (1936), and Estonia (1939). Moreover, beyond traveling exhibitions that highlighted distinctly Hungarian cultural expressions—held in The Hague and Amsterdam (1921), Stockholm and Helsinki (1922), Vienna (1924), and Warsaw, Poznań, and Kraków (1927)—approximately half a dozen art exhibitions were staged in the United States during the 1930s, including in Washington, D.C., and New York.

Warsaw in the 1920s and 1930s serves as another example of cultural vibrancy. A series of exhibitions from across Europe were organized here, including presentations of French, German, Italian, British, Danish, Belgian, Russian, Ukrainian, Latvian, and Estonian art at the Institute of Art Propaganda starting in 1930. In return, several Polish exhibitions traveled to various European cities, including Riga, Tallinn, Moscow, Budapest, Bucharest, Belgrade, Paris, Brussels, Vienna, Berlin, and Munich. For Central Europeans, the Venice Biennale, with its national pavilions and presentations, took on the role once held by the imperial exhibition halls of Vienna.

The cultural diplomacy of Estonia further highlights the intensive artistic exchange in East Central Europe. The international exhibitions organized by the Estonian State Department included events in Tallinn and Tartu, featuring art from Finland (1930/31), Poland (1934), the USSR (1934), Latvia (1936), Lithuania (1937), Italy (1937, 1938), Hungary (1938), and Belgium (1939). In 1939, the Tallinn Art House hosted a major exhibition of French art, where 20th-century modernism pioneers were displayed alongside representatives of the École française (Abel 2010, p. 99). Estonian art exhibitions also traveled to Riga (1926, 1937), Helsinki (1929), Moscow (1935), and Kaunas (1937). At the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris, a joint pavilion representing Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia was presented (Abel et al. 2010, p. 637), marking a new model of cultural and political cooperation. The pavilion’s design, created by Estonian architect Aleksander Nürnberg, was inspired by Finnish architecture, while sculptural reliefs by Lithuanian sculptor Juozas Mikėnas adorned the façade and foyer. The unity of the three Baltic states was symbolized by a painting by Latvian artist Gotlībs Kaņeps, depicting heroic figures from Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, each grasping and leaning on a single sword.

Samuel D. Albert’s article, featured in this Special Issue, examines the objectives behind the Miklós Horthy regime’s cultural diplomacy, focusing on five Hungarian Representative Exhibitions held between 1920 and 1927. While the first took place in Budapest, the others were held abroad—in The Hague, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Helsinki, Vienna, Warsaw, Poznań, and Kraków—aiming to project an officially crafted image of Hungary on the international stage. The study investigates the bureaucratic framework of these exhibitions and the evolving propagandistic rhetoric in catalog essays by leading Hungarian art historians. It also traces how shifts in the government’s foreign policy priorities were increasingly reflected in these cultural initiatives.

Like Hungary, Lithuania also used art exhibitions as a diplomatic tool. In her contribution, Giedrė Jankevičiūtė examines Lithuania’s cultural policy regarding state-endorsed exhibitions that traveled abroad and foreign exhibitions brought to the Lithuanian capital. Her analysis reveals the state’s diplomatic objectives and the key factors shaping its cultural strategy. Lithuania sought to present itself as a modern nation rooted in medieval tradition and agrarian culture, seeking to meet foreign expectations while drawing attention to its recently revived statehood. The author emphasizes that, despite criticism from the Lithuanian diaspora in the United States and internal dissent, policymakers continued to romanticize rural culture as the core of national identity. However, by the 1930s, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs shifted its focus from folk-based propaganda to promoting modern design as a national esthetic.

Similarly, Hanna-Leena Paloposki and Katarina Lopatkina illustrate the complex interplay between art, politics, and diplomacy in the interwar period through their study of a Finnish art exhibition held in Moscow in 1934. Recognized as a landmark cultural event, the display attracted considerable attention and played a significant role in bilateral cultural relations despite political tensions between the two states. By investigating the factors behind its impact, the authors reveal how artistic endeavors can extend beyond esthetics to serve as powerful instruments of diplomacy.

This intersection of cultural diplomacy and politics is further explored in Olga Kozhura’s analysis of the first exhibition of Chinese art in the Soviet Union and Katerina Lopatkina’s study of Swedish artist Albin Amelin’s visits to Moscow. Kozhura’s article delves into the Chinese Painting Exhibition, orchestrated in 1934 by the distinguished Chinese artist Xu Beihong to be presented in Moscow and Leningrad. Showcasing works spanning from the Han dynasty to the 1930s, the exhibition had previously toured Europe, where it was met with widespread acclaim and recognized as a groundbreaking effort to introduce Chinese art to Western audiences. However, its reception in the USSR was far more ambivalent. Drawing on archival records, the study reconstructs the exhibition’s organization, explores the narratives about China crafted by both Soviet and Chinese curators, and assesses the responses of Soviet audiences, ranging from art professionals to the broader public.

The main subject of Lopatkina’s article is the analysis of Amelin’s guest solo exhibition held in 1937 at the Museum of New Western Art and his second visit to Moscow, which centered on collecting payment for works sold during the show. Lopatkina examines these stays in the context of the ‘politics of hospitality’ pursued in the Soviet Union. She also discusses the shifts in Soviet cultural policy during the 1920s and 1930s, focusing on the evolution of cultural diplomacy in relation to European capitals, primarily Berlin, but also Warsaw, Prague, Brussels, Helsinki, and the capitals of the Baltic states. Additionally, she highlights the contacts with left-leaning artists in the United States.

Beyond the Soviet sphere, Austria also leveraged exhibitions as a diplomatic tool, as Irena Kossowska explores in her discussion of the 1930 Austrian art exhibition in Warsaw. Featuring 474 works by 100 artists, the exhibition covered the years 1918–1930, a period when Austria sought to overcome post-war political isolation. The article analyzes the exhibition’s rhetoric and critical reception in Warsaw within the broader context of Polish–Austrian diplomatic relations, determined by Austria’s political and economic challenges and Poland’s strategic priorities. In the exhibition catalog, Hans Tietze’s introductory essay emphasized Vienna’s role as a cultural hub at the crossroads of European artistic trends. Kossowska underscores that this perspective aligned with the cultural diplomacy of Johannes Schober’s government, which promoted openness to other nations, particularly the successors of the Habsburg Empire.

7. Cultural Diplomacy During the Communist Era

Following World War II, traveling exhibitions experienced a global surge, solidifying their role in cultural exchange and mass communication (Atkinson et al. 2022). This significance was formally recognized in UNESCO’s 1953 Manual of Travelling Exhibitions, which established professional guidelines for organizing and disseminating these shows. The manual’s author, Elodie Courter Osborne, had previously directed the Museum of Modern Art’s Department of Circulating Exhibitions (1939–1947), where she helped define the standards that later influenced MoMA’s more renowned International Program.

Similar interest in the potential of touring exhibitions as a tool for cultural–political outreach was also evident in the government agendas of Eastern-Bloc countries. Beyond the promotion of the ostensibly universalist ideals of communist ideology, the question of national identity in the visual arts remained on the agenda. Cultural authorities sought to balance international communist principles with the need to assert and preserve distinct national traditions. This dual objective was reflected in state-sponsored exhibitions that showcased both historical narratives and contemporary artistic achievements. These exhibitions often took the form of grand historicizing surveys that solidified a national artistic canon, emphasizing key figures, movements, and stylistic developments while restructuring tradition with a view to propagandistic goals (Hillings 2005). Western-oriented ‘national treasures’ exhibitions aimed to highlight a nation’s long-standing artistic connections with the West, reinforcing its historical ties to the Western cultural sphere. Notably, many official exhibition projects from Eastern-Bloc member states served as self-presentation strategies, emphasizing cultural specificity, sometimes even beyond the scope of the Soviet doctrine of socialist realism and the esthetic norms of socialist modernism. Exhibitions intended for communist audiences, on the other hand, emphasized the shared ideological core of socialism and adhered to the homogenized esthetic prescribed by socialist realism. In all cases, the ruling powers in Eastern-Bloc countries viewed cultural networking as an ideologically effective propaganda tool, aligning artistic projects with broader political and economic objectives.

The Khrushchev Thaw of 1956 marked a shift in both domestic policies and the Eastern Bloc’s relations with the West, exemplified by the artistic exchange between the People’s Republic of Poland and France. Piotr Majewski contrasts two opposing models of Polish cultural diplomacy in the Paris art scene during the 1950s and 1960s: the official stance of the communist authorities and the network of unofficial relationships between artists and Polish émigré circles, who had settled in France for political reasons after World War II. Majewski’s article reveals that the communist model aimed to portray Polish culture in a favorable light, despite the ideological divide between Eastern and Western Europe. In contrast, the émigré model rejected the political division of Europe and instead sought to reflect the forces within Poland that opposed the status quo. Furthermore, Majewski highlights how government institutions enforced a state-imposed preference for figurative art over abstraction, while émigré circles embraced predominantly modernist artistic expressions. This juxtaposition of competing models reflects the broader tension in the Eastern Bloc between official state policies and informal currents of artistic dissent.

Expanding on this, Karolina Majewska-Güde’s article situates these cultural dynamics within broader regional and economic frameworks. She reconstructs the inter-regional circulation of hand-painted ceramic objects from the Polish “Fajans” factory in Włocławek during the Cold War détente of the 1970s and 1980s. Her contribution highlights peripheral networks and movements that emerged in response to socialist cultural directives, which promoted working-class artistic engagement and framed artistic practice as labor. This interconnection between state-driven frameworks and the creation of cultural objects exemplifies a more grassroots form of exchange within the Eastern Bloc, expanding beyond the realm of elite art to encompass popular culture.

The cultural exchange within the communist bloc evolved in the 1980s, extending beyond Europe. Katarzyna Cytlak’s article argues that during that decade, international cultural relations followed a trajectory that diverged from the dominant West–Eastern Bloc paradigm, instead connecting East Central Europe with Latin America. She examines Tadeusz Kantor’s visits to Buenos Aires in 1984 and 1987 with his experimental theater ensemble, Cricot 2, which influenced the puppet theater group El Periférico de Objetos, founded in 1989. Cytlak demonstrates that Kantor’s artistic concepts took on new meanings in a different political and socio-cultural context. While his theater avoided explicit commentary on communist Poland, the Argentine group’s performances became a catalyst for collective memory and debate about the country’s former dictatorship and the traumatic experiences of military repression.

While the previous cases explore cultural interactions within and beyond the Eastern Bloc, Elena Sidorova shifts the focus to cultural engagement in the opposite direction, examining exhibitions traveling from the United States to Europe. The author analyzes the International Program at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, which sought to promote American art globally, and explores U.S. relations with post-communist Europe, enabled by private museum initiatives after the Cold War. Sidorova investigates the political and cultural objectives behind a 1990 touring exhibition that featured the first-ever solo show of Andy Warhol in Central Europe. Funded by the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, the project included institutions in Prague, Dresden, Budapest, and Warsaw. By examining both the organizers’ intentions and the enthusiastic reception of Warhol’s Pop Art, the author emphasizes the role of soft power in strengthening transatlantic ties, advancing U.S. cultural influence, reinforcing the Western art historical canon, and countering lingering Soviet legacies.

8. Future Research Perspectives

This Special Issue aims to further explore the complex cultural interconnections of East Central Europe—both with global centers and peripheral regions—whether the area is considered a cohesive cultural entity or as a mosaic shaped by its political history. Despite growing interest in transnational exchanges and transculturality, significant gaps remain in research on the cross-border entanglements, interregional networks, and intercontinental relations that have influenced the region, particularly during the interwar period. These include the touring of artistic events and institutional collaborations facilitated by both state agencies and non-governmental organizations in Europe, North America, and Asia.

Beyond the interwar period, the articles in this issue also contribute to ongoing discussions about East Central Europe’s cultural exchanges during the Cold War, challenging the dominant narrative of its isolation behind the Iron Curtain. Although often perceived as cut off, the region remained actively engaged in artistic and intellectual dialogs that extended beyond its socialist allies in Asia and the Global South to include the capitalist West. By uncovering the political forces and institutional mechanisms that shaped the international circulation of exhibitions to and from the Soviet bloc, this issue critically examines the cultural frameworks of communist states and the ways in which art was strategically mobilized by the state.

Ultimately, the contributions in this Special Issue provide a glimpse into overlooked dimensions of cross-cultural and interregional interactions that linked East Central Europe to the broader world. While these studies address only select aspects of a vast and multifaceted field, we hope they will serve as a catalyst for further research, encouraging a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of the region’s role in global cultural diplomacy.