ABSTRACT
The reception of American art in East-Central Europe between 1945 and 1990 was restricted by the postwar division of the continent and more broadly of the world, into the communist Eastern bloc, dominated by the Soviet Union, and the West, with the United States at its head. The anti-American atmosphere during the Stalinist period (1945–1953) after the Second World War and the increasing Cold War propaganda were not conducive for the promotion of US art, and most cultural exchanges were “frozen.” In 1956 the eminent art historian and critic Mieczyslaw Porebski reviewed the Venice ¬Biennale with incisive descriptions of paintings by Pollock, de Kooning, and other American artists. American Hyperrealism attracted significant interest in Poland. In the 1970s, a decade characterized by broader access to mass media, this tendency influenced the artists of the so-called New Figuration movement and the younger Hyperrealist painters.
