PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Havelková, Tereza
AU  - Dudr, Karel
TI  - Encounter in the question of reality : Exhibitions of Surrealism and Socialist Realism in Prague in 1947
DP  - 2024 Dec 11
TA  - Staletá Praha
PG  - 66--91
VI  - 40
IP  - 1
AID - 10.56112/sp.2024.1.04
IS  - 02316056
AB  - Prague in 1947 remained a place of free expression, where various artistic trends and movements could manifest themselves. It was once again an international cultural space that, after the war caesura, re-established previous contacts in both the West and in the East, and was the home to personalities who were able to stand up to what was coming from abroad in an openly critical way. But this was soon to change. By exploring the theme of realism and reality in the light of two, perhaps seemingly contradictory, exhibitions of socialist realism and resurgent surrealist art in Prague, this study focuses on this pre-breakthrough period before February 1948 in Czechoslovakia and on the events in cultural discourse that already foreshadowed the later transformation of positions on the political and artistic scene. It involves not only the confrontation of these positions, but also their re-evaluation, and above all the effort to understand what Surrealism and Socialist Realism wanted to say about reality and how they wanted to deal with it.