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This manuscript describes the significance of the Hungarian‐Soviet artist Béla Uitz's contribution to the definition of Socialist Realism through the development of a style of anti‐imperialist painting based on national form that I call Internationalist Socialist Realism. Relying on previously unpublished archival documents, articles from the Soviet press, and analyses of artworks themselves, the manuscript shows specifically how Uitz developed his internationalist style through transnational encounters with leftist activists in Paris and avant‐garde artists in Soviet Ukraine. It also shows how the artist used his position as a policy maker in the Soviet cultural administration to create a platform for the exploration of the role of national form in Soviet art known as the International Bureau of Revolutionary Artists (MBRKh) and how he used that platform to ensure that Internationalist Socialist Realism became a key component of the official style of visual representation in the early 1930s. The manuscript further demonstrates that while the Soviet state's turn to Russocentrism and Slavocentrism in the late 1930s denuded Internationalist Socialist Realism of many of its radically collectivist, anti‐imperial elements, the cultural apparatus accepted Uitz's core idea that the tactile connection between the human body and the affective materiality of national forms could help catalyze political change and establish connections between different peoples. The manuscript shows that changes in representations of national form in Socialist Realism over time can reveal valuable new insight into the politics of Soviet culture, both during and beyond Stalinism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates a transformative encounter between the Chinese artist Xu Beihong (徐悲鴻 1895-1953) and audiences in the Soviet Union during his 1933-1934 exhibitions of Chinese art in Europe. While Xu was exchanging perspectives and addressing questions about Chinese painting, a misreading of one of his paintings sparked in him a reconsideration of content and form that eventually led to the creation of some of the earliest Socialist realist ink-and-color paintings in China. This addition to his repertoire is arguably more significant to his legacy than his most popular works because of the way it heralded the coming Socialist realist evolution in guohua (國畫 national painting) and the manner in which Xu's choices would meet the ideological needs of the Communist Party well before it secured authority over the direction of China's arts. Special attention is paid to situating Xu's personal work vis-à-vis Republican and revolutionary art and explaining how the concurrent political milieu paved the way for both the prestige of his art in popular and cultural memory and the unprecedented stature of his art education methodologies in China's revolutionary times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the painting "A Letter From the Front," by Aleksandr Laktionov, a Stalin Prize laureate. It explores the significance of the painting in relation to the emergence of the social realism in art after World War II. The author claims that the art piece represented a miniature victory of socialism depicting an intimate view of a Soviet Russian family and neighborhood in a wartime provincial life. A brief historic overview of the art work is also provided. The artistic technique and theme of Laktionov is also explained.

The author examines the political and social context of Chinese painting in the early 1950s. The author analyzes several representative works of old gouhua painters who engaged themselves in the so-called caimo or colored ink figure pictures, a highly regarded genre of socialist realism since 1949 Liberation. He also discusses the three interpretations of socialist realism which convey certain historical truths about it.

The article profiles the painter Gerhard Richter. According to the author, Richter's personality was formed of the politics and painting of the National Socialism and of Stalinist Socialist Realism. He acquired French strategies and most of American neo-avant-garde strategies after his arrival in West Germany in 1961. His key models in postwar art include Lucio Fontana and Kackson Pollock, who also underwent transition from a figurative mode of representational painting to a progressive mode of modernist abstraction. Among his works include "Ema," "Uncle Rudi," and "Young Woman Reading." Richter also introduces the Nazi history into the work of the neo-avant-garde. In 1972, he was chosen to represent the Federal Republic of Germany at the Venice Biennale.

The article compares the analyses and descriptions of post-war avant-garde art in former Socialist countries. It notes that the most important question for states of the former Socialist system is that of the relationship between art and politics. The politics of totalitarian states itself caused a natural protest and desire to act in an opposite fashion, which generally did not become political actions. On the other hand, the states supplied concrete limits to restrict artists. Moreover, various modernism are in fact the inevitable backbone of the art history.