Maria-alina Asavei

Rewriting the Canon of Visual Arts in Communist Romania: a Case Study Maria-alina Asavei

The closer the past is, the less penetrable it becomes for the historian. The scholar's task is to recollect possible surviving data and to make them intelligible. This book explores some of the most important ¿existential programs¿ of the artists who lived in communist Romania. My main attempt in this study is to correct the canon of visual arts of the communist period by including some neglected ¿unofficial¿ artists in. I hope that the great majority of artists who have been at history¿s margins will be acknowledged and remembered, and I also hope that this rehabilitation will create a different panorama of the ¿new history¿. I am sure that here are many other artists and cultural workers of that time waiting to be discovered. It is the task of their contemporaries to make their stories visible and useful. It is a duty as well. In this sense, I believe that artists, art historians and cultural historians will find this book quite interesting.