11 from MiddleEurope

i remember the first trips after the war with my family from udine, a border town where i was born. we travelled east, to the surroundings between trieste and carinthia, where one could perceive the distinctive character of central europe. as a young man, almost fifty years ago, i already knew what i was going to do. i was fascinated by the former yugoslavia and although it was close geographically, it represented a rather distant foreign country close to the “iron curtain“, which was impenetrable at that time. to get there one needed a special permission and a visa issued after months of waiting. unlike the others, i always liked doing all those difficult things. even the
air had a different smell in those places there was a different lifestyle, the way of living and thinking. first ljubljana and then zagreb almost became the homeland of my choice, one emotional, the other cultural. i immediately adjusted myself to that advanced culture, surprisingly open to new initiatives, unspoilt by money, which destroyed all human brains in west europe. from there the first contacts were made with those parts of the world in which that disgraceful system was still not established they were freed from those ‘sharks’, which had already contaminated every place where huge profits could be reaped.
in the 19605 i began travelling to the countries behind the iron curtain. to cross the border you were supposed to wait in front of the abandoned frontier for hours before the guards eventually moved the heavy concrete barrier with a big effort. all this lasted for years but it seems to me as if it was yesterday. unfortunately, everything finished due to violence, consumer lifestyle and financial speculation caused at first inconspicuously, then openly by the infamous american colonial power, which entered these countries in an unstoppable and irreversible manner. actually these negative effects found there an easy way to expand destructively. for these prudent and rigorous nations the joy of culture, though genetically rooted and still alive, became something rare, subjected to a sudden whim. the consciousness of central europe that it is against philosophical guidance and thinking subsides quickly. it seems that art, until recently untouched as it was considered not to be sufficiently prepared for the commercial exploitation and fraud of the "system of art", gave in and accepted, as it seems, the only form of existence, the economic value.
precise art, the art of perceptive exploration of the american system, even became to be associated with kitsch, as it is inaccessible and unsuitable for its typology, in order to be created around the worst manipulations with the aim of profit, the only thing this system craves for. this art has the reason of existence in europe because of the trajectory shaped by the pioneers of historical avant—garde movements, from de stijl, the bauhaus and constructivism to kinetic and programme art. it is of particular significance in east europe: poland and its great initiators born and working there: wladyslaw strzeminski, henryk berlewi, henryk staiewski and kararzyna kobro hungary, the home of lajos kassak, étienne béothy, laszlo peri and victor vasarely, the czech republic where frantisek kupka and zdenék pésanek worked intensively and slovakia with its major artists mikulas galanda and ludovit fulla. they contributed to the formation of the evolution history of the previous century and anticipated the future, which has to begin. this portfolio includes the current followers of this history, the best of many: tamas konok, janos fajo, imre bak, jerzy grabowski, ryszard winiarski, janusz kapusta, stanislav kolibal, jan kubicek, hugo demartini, milan dobes and stépan pala, the artists representing four different nations of central europe — hungary, poland, the czech republic and slovakia — which became the members of the european union.