"Art Under Ban: The Underground of the 1970s"

"Art Under Ban: The Underground of the 1970s" – the fourth lecture in the series "Nonconformists: Art Against the System"

This was a time when a painting could be used as evidence, and an exhibition could be seen as an act of civil disobedience.

The 1970s were an era of double meanings and double lives. In the morning, an artist might paint a poster about the friendship of nations, and in the evening — their real work, hidden from bosses, colleagues, and even neighbors.
Apartments turned into galleries, forests into exhibition halls, and studios into spaces of freedom. Art went underground to stay true to itself.

In this lecture, we will talk about how artists resisted — not through manifestos, but through the very act of creation. How they produced paintings, installations, and performances in a country where only socialist realism officially existed.