The Many Facets of the Romanian Conceptual Art

Abstract

Conceptual art was and still is a subject of great interest for art criticism and contemporary artists. The attention paid to this art has emerged both from the internationalization of the practices associated with conceptual art that continues up to the present day, but also because of the challenge and even rejection of this art as visual art. In Romania, since the early years of the establishment of the communist regime, art has become strictly subordinate to political interests, artists being forced to rally socialist realism and to abandon the styles practiced in the interwar period. This has reduced the aesthetic autonomy, art has to illustrate mainly the new social order, the rise of the proletariat and the unique political model: socialism. This paper is part of an analytical approach that aims to understand the conceptual art according to the specificity of Romania during those years and the political and social context in which it appeared. In the historical period that is the subject of this research, between the mid-1960s and the 1970s, the ruptures of the art of the beginning of the century and the politically imposed art were best observed.