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Scope and Contents Amazon.com: The avant-garde movements of Central Europe were an integral part of modernism's evolution as it reached its peak throughout the continent during the 1920s. Written documents--manifestoes, artists' statements, and reviews--were the lifeblood of these movements and, during the periods when political events conspired to isolate them, one of their few means of communication and exchange. Much of this crucial evidence has become lost to us, and the artistic avant-gardes of Central Europe have been a blind spot of modernist studies. Until their narratives have been recovered, the story of modernism will remain incomplete. In this book an international team of scholars has selected an essential compendium of documents that take an important step toward regaining this lost perspective.Between Worlds contains primary documents of the avant-gardes in Austria, the Czech lands, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia from 1910 to 1930. The manifestoes and magazines of...

Scope and Contents Amazon.com: TCentral European Avant-Gardes presents the first interpretive overview of the complex webs of interaction among the artists and intellectuals of early twentieth-century Central Europe. The key stylistic transformation of the period was from Expressionism to Constructivism, as artists and writers, against a volatile background of war and revolution, saw the opportunity literally to construct a new world through their work. The borders between the visual arts, photography, film, architecture, poetry, and typography were obliterated, as artists sought to transcend the forces of traditionalism to forge an elemental visual language that would overcome national and linguistic boundaries. Yet at the same time that these artists advocated pluralism and unity, their work engaged issues such as nationalism and tradition that still resonate in artistic circles today.The book, which accompanies a major exhibition organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and curated by...