Curator: Kädi Talvoja
Designer: Laura Kõiv

The 6th World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow in 1957 was one of the first massive worldwide events in the Soviet Union in the post-Stalin era. It was visited by more than 34000 young people from 130 countries.

Besides official cultural programs, numerous sporadic meetings and events took place. In art history, one of these has been recorded: a demonstration of action painting by Harry Colman, Jackson Pollock’s devoted follower. A young artist from Tartu, Lola Liivat-Makarova, as well as several artists from Moscow, including Oskar Rabin, Vladimir Namuhhin, Lidia Masterkova etc, are said to have been “converted” to abstractionism after that event.
The main aim of the exhibition is to research the background of that historical “slip” through archive materials, documentations and recollections.

For further reading see also the homepage of KUMU:
http://www.ekm.ee/eng/kalender.php?event_id=407&d_fili=2