ABSTRACT
From the outset in the avant-garde of the early twentieth century, constructive-concrete art was international. As an artistic expression that should not refer to nature, sensuousness, or emotion in its formal appearance (i.e., to be of purely mental origin, and only using the basic elements of painting—line, color and space), it spread over Europe and influenced several artists in the 1930s. This proliferation was promoted by the emigration of artists, at first from Russia in connection with the fundamental political changes after Josef Stalin came to power and later by the Machtübernahme (seizure of power) of the Nazis. Since in both totalitarian systems the constructive-concrete art was no longer accepted as an artistic expression or defamed as decadent just because of formal aspects, its development in these countries and in all occupied ones was interrupted, while it developed continuously at least in the western parts of Europe. But no later than the beginning of the 1950s, the postulate of socialist realism applied to East-Central European countries and “the goal of concrete art … to create objects for mental use, just as man develops objects for material usage” 1 opposed the demands of this postulate diametrically. This is why the preconditions for artistic work in the field of constructive-concrete art became very much dependent on the cultural policy in these countries. Nevertheless, numerous artists devoted themselves to the field of constructivism and concrete art in all countries of the Eastern Bloc.
