Author Description

The catalogue "Group Dynamics-Collectives of the Modernist Period" sets out from the observation that the art-historical scholarship on the specific ways in which artists' groups have shaped the evolution of art remains fragmentary and often narrowly focused on the West. Instead of staging a contest of rivaling aesthetic tendencies, the show sheds light on the development of collectives and the historical circumstances in which they emerged, reconstructing their political agendas and visions both practicable and, in some instances, utopian. The ubiquity of similar historical structures and communal strategies in different settings underscores the crucial role that collectives have played in introducing and disseminating central ideas and innovations-within and beyond modernist art.