"The Varvaristy" Soviet Unofficial Art

Abstract

W ith the first exchange of specialists, cultural delegations and tourists in the post-Stalin period, bits of information on developments in Western European and American art began to reach interested groups by way of postcards, articles, occasional reproductions and by word of mouth. Soon this assortment of impressions about what was going on in the West began to be reproduced and circulated from hand to hand, group to group, and collector to individual, some reproductions even reaching the black market trade which soon became widespread, handling such sensitive commodities as Western art books and magazines. With the opening of the East-West cultural exchange in 1959 and the general influx of tourists that followed, books, magazines, and reproductions became so available, with black market scavengers saturating the market, that finally only the latest information on such movements as pop and op art were in great demand.