How the West Europe discovered art from behind the Iron Curtain
The key place for Czech, Slovak and generally Central European visual arts during the rigid normalisation period was surprisingly West German Bochum. Behind this exclusive revelation was the director of the local art museum, Petr Spielmann (1932-2020). This art historian left Czechoslovakia in 1969, settled in what was then West Germany, and worked at the Kunstmuseum Bochum, first as a lecturer, later as a curator, and finally as director from 1972 to 1997.
It was Spielmann who, from the early 1970s onwards, began to build up a collection of art from behind the Iron Curtain, something unprecedented in the “capitalist West”.
350 exhibitions and a cultural festival
Otto Gutfreund, Josef Šíma, Mikuláš Medek, Cubism and music, Jan Amos Komenský… This is just a small selection of the exhibitions that Spielmann has organised in Bochum. Thanks to him, art lovers were introduced to works they had no access to during the Cold War era. There were 350 exhibitions in all.
It was not just about exhibitions and the expansion of art collections. In 1974, Spielmann was at the heart of Kemnade International, an international cultural festival for expats, emigrants and gastarbeiterers. The first edition was attended by 12,000 visitors in June, and the event, in a modified form, is still held today.
Spielmann’s study and other Toyen in Olomouc
As part of this year’s SEFO 2024 Triennial exhibition, the Olomouc Museum of Art has transferred Spielmann’s Bochum study to its premises and has followed it up with works from the Bochum collection, which it has exhibited in its permanent exhibition of modern art. Visitors can thus see paintings by Toyen, Josef Šíma, Władysław Strzemiński, Josef Albers and other personalities of the Central European area.
The exhibition, stigmatically titled Ghetto Central Europe, thus offers an original insight into the work of Peter Spielmann, one of the most important personalities of visual art in the second half of the 20th century.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)