Escaping from the art historical amnesia of East-Central Europe with East European Arts

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“We are working towards elevating the culture of East-Central Europe from an art historical and commercial perspective, building an infostructure to help contemporary artists and galleries to present and sell works of art to a broader public, financially supporting artists' studios due to Covid-19 interruption, with online sales only”

This is how founder Marcela Hudakova defined her vision of her new project East European Arts. The recently launched project touches on the issues of peripheral art markets and their art communities with a specific focus on post-socialist Eastern and Central European art production (Belarus, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Ukraine). New markets have recently emerged in Northern African countries, Middle Eastern and BRIC countries. Due to various historical and political circumstances, the Eastern European market is still experiencing isolation from European and global markets but nonetheless has a significant potential. We should admit it does not have such a long history as the Western one and is at the stage of its active development. 

In 2021, the anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the transition to a market economy in the former Communist states of Eastern and Central Europe will be celebrated. The question arises arbitrarily: does it make sense for us to argue about the existence of a special post-socialist art market? If so, how do the so-called “transitional” period and introduced institutional reforms determine the development of the art in a post-socialist setting? East European Arts aims to open a new path in understanding the recent market for Eastern European works of art, signifying its complexity and its increasing transparency.

 

“We are planning on running live exhibitions, building an art programme that presents established artists of this region here in Paris while inviting one French creative talent that works in a different medium (digital art, sound, performance, etc.). In my vision, art exhibitions should be more interactive, not only talking to the audience, but also allowing the audience to speak back.”

 

Marcela Hudakova

 

 Launched in 2020 by Marcela Hudakova, an art historian and an arts entrepreneur with solid experience on the international art market, this new art platform has a promising goal of entering into a conversation with the Western world by introducing the keys to the appreciation of Eastern European cultural heritage. After getting a foot in the door of such auction houses as Christie’s, Sotheby’s, Bonhams and blue-chip galleries such as the Gagosian, and following the completion of a postgraduate degree in History of Art from The Courtauld Institute in 2014 and the establishment of Lore Art Advisory (LAA) in 2016, Hudakova felt an increasing intellectual drive and desire to make an impact.  

 

“In the very near future, we will conduct interviews with alumni, PhD and other students of the Courtauld Institute of Art that are focused on the region of Eastern Europe, but also involve others from the cultural ecosystem to educate.”

 

By initiating an online platform and an online gallery that already displays artists as Adéla Janská, Šárka Koudelová, Tymek Borowski, Jakub Čuška, Robert Gabris, Julius Reichel (in the near future a pop-up store will welcome visitors too), the founder has set a goal to help Eastern European artists to have a better global presence and to achieve community inclusiveness by creating a space for dialogue and mutual enrichment.

 

To find out more about the project please visit the East European Arts site.