The recent publication of Luiza Nader’s Konceptualizm w PRL and Łukasz Ronduda’s Polish Art of the 1970s has served to reinvigorate a debate that has been ongoing in Poland since the 1970s. This debate centers around what it meant to be a radical artist in the 1960s and 70s. The cultural policy of the Polish authorities was among the most lenient in the Soviet “bloc”, allowing artists to pursue conceptualism and experimental action art. But there was a trade-off for this freedom: artists were to steer clear of politics.

“The aim here,” states Jeremy Howard in his introduction, “is a redefinition of what may be considered the art of eastern Europe.” Ambitious enough, one might think, but he goes on to proclaim that the book should “at least partially, deconstruct some of the prevailing notions and myths of what comprises European art per se.”

In the Shadow of Yalta. Art and Avant-Garde in Eastern Europe 1945-1989, the long-awaited English translation of Piotr Piotrowski’s 2004 book, boasts of a well-chosen title not only for its descriptive qualities, but also because it refers to the rather dark and indistinct history of a particular portion of Eastern Europe: the area falling under the Soviet regime following the Yalta Agreement in 1945.