Cold War Art Worlds

Prague as a vital Cold War hub for South Asian artists.

During the Cold War, the Central-European capital city Prague, along with other previously less noticed locations in the polarised post-war world, emerged as a key site where an art world of particular importance for artists from South Asia developed. By emphasising cultural mobility as a catalyst for exchange and network building, this book challenges and complicates assumptions about Cold War binaries of East and West and the polarisation between so-called totalitarian regimes and free cultures. Positioning Prague as a nexus where South-Asian modernisms intersected with multiple peoples, histories, and ideologies in the post-World War II era, it offers a narrative of decolonisation that rejected rigid systemic alignment in favour of participation across blocs by prioritising migratory aesthetics over nationalist parochialism. Well-researched and rich in archival materials, this book proposes new ways of writing art histories and makes a significant contribution to both Cold War studies and critical global modernism studies.

Erratum: p. 79 figure 21: © Bildrecht, Wien 2025

Notes on Image Titles and Reproductions
Acknowledgements

Chapter 1. Introduction
1.1 Cold War Art Worlds: South Asian Art and Artists in Prague, 1947–1989
1.2 The Formation of Art Worlds and Artistic Careers through Mobility
1.3 Cold War Art Worlds
1.4 Prague: Co-creating Alternative Art Worlds
1.5 Looking Towards India
1.6 Activating Art History through the Archives
1.7 The Mobility of South Asian Artists and Cold War Art Worlds

Chapter 2. A Pakistani Artist in Prague
2.1 Visualising Transformation at a Crossroads in History
2.2 Shakir Ali: Ideological Affiliations of Artist and Traveller
2.3 Decolonisation and Sites of Production
2.4 Codes of Affiliation

Chapter 3. Exhibiting and Collecting South Asian Art in Prague and Lidice
3.1 Indian Art Exhibitions in Czechoslovakia and an Indian Art Collection in Prague
3.1.1 Mobility across Waters and Divides
3.1.2 Exhibiting India as a Collaborative Effort
3.1.3 Fostering “Indicki-Czech[oslovak] Bhai-Bhai”
3.1.4 Appreciation from the Margins
3.1.5 Mobility across a “Curtain of Lace”
3.1.6 Establishing a Collection of Modern Indian Art in Prague
3.1.7 Curatorial Efforts to Foster Friendship
3.1.8 The 1979 Indian Art Exhibition: Modernist Art at Home in Prague
3.2 A Solidarity Collection in Lidice
3.3 Exhibiting and Collecting South Asian Art in Socialist Central Europe

Chapter 4. Individual Journeys to Prague
4.1 Ram Kumar (1924–2018): Voyaging into Communism
4.1.1 “Displaced Things”: Stranded between Locations
4.1.2 Two-Person Exhibitions
4.2 Maqbool Fida Husain’s Prague Connection: Mobility and Art Worlds
4.2.1 The Perception of the Margin
4.2.2 A Strong Connection with Prague: Intersecting and Co-creating Place
4.2.3 Capturing Prague as a Significant Place

Chapter 5. Chittaprosad’s Immobile Mobility
5.1 A Single Room with a Central Function
5.2 A Single Room as a Stage for a Puppet Theatre
5.3 Exhibiting in Prague
5.4 The Anatomy of a Film about the History and Life of an Artist
5.5 A Symbolic Personal Friendship

Chapter 6. Conclusion
6.1 Indian Art Students in Prague
6.2 Czechoslovak Engagement with India through the Camera Lens
6.2.1 Filmic Documentation about Cultural Exchange
6.2.2 Moderní indickí maliari (1967)
6.3 Final Remarks

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Simone Wille

Simone Wille, Institute of Art History, University of Innsbruck.