Gretchen Simms: The 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow and the Soviet Artistic Reaction to the Abstract Art (2007)

20 January 2013, dusan

“The American National Exhibition was an exchange exhibition organised by the United States Information Agency (USIA) and took place at Sokolniki Grounds in Moscow in 1959. The overall director George V. Allen and the Association of Federated Artists (AFA) Vice President Lloyd Goodrich, who was also President of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, were responsible for the art section of the Exhibition. The art committee selected, intended to show the Soviet public the developments in modern American art since World War I.

The Soviet response to the Exhibition can only be fully appreciated by looking back at the developments within Russian and Soviet art as well as the political and social changes which the peoples in the Soviet Union experienced under Khrushchev. Through the analysis of the Soviet reception of the Exhibition, this dissertation shows how the Soviet public and especially the artworld in Moscow perceived specifically the American abstract art.

It reveals how the American abstract art displayed at the Exhibition facilitated the Soviet artists path in looking back at their Russian roots, looking within themselves and looking outside of their immediate boundaries in order to create new Soviet art.” (from the Abstract)

Art History, University of Vienna
Supervisor Dieter Bogner
191 pages

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