Beyond Socialist Realism: Alternative Painting in Dresden

This chapter debunks long-held myths about painting in the GDR, undermining the tenet that artists were compelled to work within an impersonal mandate of socialist realism and isolated from artistic currents in the West. Focusing on the Art Informel movement that dominated underground Dresden art circles in the 1950s and 1960s, the chapter explores how those involved with the movement rejected socialist realism in favour of personal spontaneity and the fortuity of the painting process. They engaged not with the dictates of the East German cultural authorities but with the pre-war avant-garde and new post-war aesthetic experiments emanating from the West. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]