ABSTRACT
Researchers who deal with artistic transfers in Cold War Europe cannot avoid encountering the Italian painter Gabriele Mucchi (b. Turin, 1899 and d. Milan, 2002). He was an uncommon figure both for his long stays in the German Democratic Republic and as an all-rounder intellectual. In fact, in his autobiography Le occasioni perdute (Blown chances), he described himself as a humanist whose main interests were not only painting but also architecture, design, translating poems, magazine illustration and politics as a member of the Italian Communist Party. 1 He was undoubtedly one of the most interesting representatives of realism in Europe for his early attempts at theorizing the movement after the Second World War, and because he was a real mediator between the blocs of Italian realism. His journeys, lectures, articles, and essays—and also his chair as guest professor in Berlin and in Greifswald—tell us of several and lively contacts which were kept alive thanks to his efforts despite the division of Europe. 2
