The Baltics: Nonconformist and Modernist Art During the Soviet Era

This exhibition is the first major survey of modernist art produced in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in reaction to communist repression during the post-World War II period.

The Baltics, featuring 150 paintings, works on paper and sculpture, highlights the great variety of artistic alternatives that evolved in that region during the thirty years of Soviet domination in opposition to the officially sanctioned art of socialist realism. The styles and subject matter of these works employ the "prohibited" movements of abstraction, expressionism, hyperrealism, surrealism, and conceptual art, as well as such forbidden themes as anti-Soviet political commentary, religion, and eroticism.

Unlike many Moscow nonconformist artists, whose works abound in political motifs, Baltic artists did not think in terms of political categories; they preferred to explore various modernist styles and movements. The rise of innovative art, however, signified a more subtle form of opposition to socialist realism.

The Baltics demonstrates that, although the Baltic countries shared a similar political history for centuries, they constitute three very different cultural regions. The exhibition reveals the interplay of regional unity and national diversity, as manifested in the Baltic countries' range of responses to common concerns and preoccupations.

The exhibition has been selected from the 3,200 Baltic works in the Zimmerli's collections. 

Curated by Alla Rosenfeld