At the 5th Congress of the Latvian Soviet Writers' Union in December 1965, the younger generation of writers and the more liberal section of the older generation managed to oust from the Union's Executive Board the five most notorious defenders of Socialist Realism and the Communist Party line in literature. A more liberal leadership of the Union was elected. In speeches at the congress, the younger generation of writers spoke out in favor of more creative freedom, against censorship, for the rehabilitation of the pre-Soviet literary heritage, and about the possibilities of getting more information about Latvian exile literature and world literature in general, and protested against the ban on the Jāņi midsummer festival. Although the Latvian Communist Party Central Committee was unhappy with the results of the congress, it had to put up with them. The congress was an important turning point in Latvian literature, and in the history of the Writers' Union, which changed from being an obedient follower of the Communist Party into an organization which was willing and able (although within certain limits) to defend creative freedom and the national culture.
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Rīga Bezdelīgu iela 1, Latvia LV-1048
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Documents from surveillance, investigation reports, censorship protocols, song lyrics and photographs - all those materials were created by the State Security in the 1980s during its investigation into the rising punk and rock movement in Poland. Due to the rising pressure from the authorities to document the non-conformist behaviours, the investigation reports are often very detailed.
Those materials are dispersed among different bureaus of IPN all over Poland.
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This painting is part of the series Compoziţii (Compositions), which contributed decisively to Hans Mattis-Teutsch’s international fame at the beginning of the 1920s (Almási 2001, 29). The work reflects the tendency towards the abstract visible in his creative work in that period, marked by the artist’s involvement in the expressionist group Der Sturm in Berlin (Mesea 2009, 23–24). The rhythmic character of his works has made certain art historians characterise his style as “musical expressionism” (Gassner 2001, 45; Mesea 2009, 24). The natural motifs present in his work before the 1920s are turned in this series into abstract forms. The paintings in this series, which were very well received both by the general public and by art specialists in the interwar period, were not exhibited during the first part of the communist period, because avant-garde art was considered “decadent” and “bourgeois” by the new regime (Popica 2015, 3). Nevertheless, the Art Museum in Braşov (which at the time was a section of the Braşov Regional Museum) purchased certain paintings in this series (including the one described here) in the years 1967–1968, in the context of a relative liberalisation of the cultural policies of the communist regime. None of these works was exhibited as part of the museum’s permanent collection, which shows that Mattis-Teutsch’s recuperation during this liberalisation period was limited.
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Although it is not officially dated, Muncitor forestier (Forestry Worker) was probably painted in the late 1940s or early 1950s, when its author was trying to adapt his artistic creation to the new cultural policies. From the point of view of the technique used, the painting combines tempera and oil painting on plywood. According to the art historian Radu Popica, the painting Muncitor forestier (Forestry Worker) illustrates the “difficulties” encountered by Mattis-Teutsch in the process of adapting to socialist realism (Popica 2015, 12). The artist tried to combine techniques of his art from the 1930s with the precepts of socialist realism. However, this synthesis, called by the artist “constructive-realism,” failed to convince the authorities (Popica 2015, 13). As has been observed by Dan-Octavian Breaz, although Mattis-Teutsch’s art in the 1930s suggested the “new man” of socialist realism, the modernist techniques used by Mattis-Teutsch were in fact incompatible with socialist realism, because they were unsuitable for the purpose that art was supposed to serve in the new society (Breaz 2013, 124). This explains the negative reception of Mattis-Teutsch’s artistic creation in the 1950s, despite his honest attempts to integrate into the new cultural context.
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The work belongs to Hans Mattis-Teutsch’s constructivist period. According to the art historian Gheorghe Vida, constructivism was assimilated by Mattis-Teutsch at the time of his involvement in the Romanian avant-garde during the 1920s and at the beginning of the 1930s (Vida 2009, 80). During this period, Mattis-Teutsch collaborated closely with groups of avant-garde artists formed around the cultural publications Contimporanul, Integral and Alge, sharing the artistic vision of these groups, as well as their socialist views. His artistic vision marked by constructivism was theorised in his work Kunstideologie. Stabilität und Aktivität im Kunstwerk published in interwar Germany (Mattis-Teutsch 1931). This vision, which sees art as a “messenger” of the “new man” in the “technological era without traditions,” is marked by the mobility and rhythm of modern life (Mattis-Teutsch 1977, 76–79). The work and rhythms specific to modern man are also central themes in this painting from the end of the 1920s, and the title of the work is a direct reference to the relationship between intellectuals and the proletariat in Marxist ideology. As with all the works of Hans Mattis-Teutsch created during the interwar period, this item could not be displayed during the 1950s due to the fact that the avant-garde techniques were in contradiction with socialist realism.
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