Fondation Giacometti

 “For the first time in recent exhibition history, ‘Post-war: Art Between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945-1965’ examines the dynamic and turbulent post-war period as a global phenomenon. In eight chapters, the exhibition guides visitors through the 20 years which followed the Second World War. It shows how artists coped with, and responded to, the traumas of the Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki; how the two political blocs of the Cold War exploited the arts and created an opposition between socialist realism and abstraction, and how displacement and migration produced new cosmopolitan contexts in Europe. The post-war period was also marked by the end of European colonial systems; the rise of nation-building, decolonisation and liberation movements; partition of countries in Europe, Asia and the Middle East; as well as the Civil Rights movement in the United States. These changes triggered an incredible energy that was visible in the art of the time. New technologies started to flow into everyday life; the space age fascinated artists as well as the masses, opening up a whole new and dynamic area for consideration. Okwui Enwezor deals in particular with the importance of Giacometti's work in the productions of that time.”