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Collection 2. Is the War Over? Art in a Divided World (1945-1968)

Sabatini Building, Floor 4

On the fourth floor, the Collection covers the artistic transformations occurring in the post-war period, during the development of the tension-ridden international geopolitical scenario involving two different worlds and two antagonistic systems, the United States and the Soviet Union.

Following the blow that the Holocaust and World War II (which had its rehearsal in the Spanish Civil War) dealt to the utopian ambitions of the avant-garde, modernity isolated itself in its autonomy in order to explain the world. In contrast with this retreat into gestural and expressive abstraction, the society of consumerism takes shape and a series of political changes deepen the polarization between the highly-individualistic, Western world and the Soviet collective ideal, two opposing, yet complementary poles. Art, despite its appearance of isolation, is embedded within this complex framework of discourse, where the battle for ideological hegemony is waged in cultural primacy.

The Collection

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