ABSTRACT
In 2007, the National Museum in Warsaw exhibited the part of its collection from the years 1945–55. 1 Next to creations by Tadeusz Kantor à la Picasso or abstract paintings by Jerzy Nowosielski, the exhibition showed foreign paintings that the museum had bought at the time, notably Italian and French socialist realism, but interestingly no Soviet art. A painting by Rena-to Guttuso from Rome and one by Andrzej Wróblewski from Kraków were displayed side by side. Also on display were a still life by André Fougeron, which the National Museum purchased after its exhibition in Warsaw in 1952, and another still life by Zygmunt Radnicki. The exhibition revealed that socialist realism from Western countries, such as Italy and France, may have been more influential than socialist realism from the USSR. 2 The question of defining Europe emerged as a consequence—it was no longer a question concerning the geography of the single countries within Europe, but the changing shape of the continent. More generally, it suggested a complex circulation of objects, persons and ideas, as well as transactions between East and West through the Iron Curtain. One issue is how we describe and refer to the frontier usually called the Iron Curtain: it could be successively porous or, on the contrary, impassable. In any case, the censorship that the actors endured and/or practiced in the socialist dictatorships did not mean that they were isolated inside their country. We have to understand the reality of the different frontiers created either by national boundaries or by the Iron Curtain. Like all frontiers, they were both an obstacle—for those stopped by them—and a resource—for those who could cross them, be it physically or mentally.
