New insights into the political attack on abstract art at the beginning of 1963

Abstract

Into the known, but still insufficiently clarified circumstances of the political attack on abstract art by the very top of the state and party elite at the beginning of 1963, certain new insights have been gained from the exhibition Socialism and Modernity. Why and how did it happen that two statesmen on such high and influential positions, like Khrushchev and Tito, had found themselves involved, almost at the same time, and given their priorities, in such bizarre quest as attacking abstract art in their own environment? Of course, at the core of the entire 'case' was not only ('abstract') art. Still, no matter what really caused it - whether the reasons lie in politics of foreign affairs or in still undisclosed inner circumstances - this 'case' is still an unavoidable episode in the relations: politics - culture - art in the history of socialist Yugoslavia, which is today particularly intriguing in the context of understanding those relations as they were at the time when the attacks happened - at the beginning of the 1960s.