The reception of the Vienna school of art history in Poland in the years 1945-1955

Abstract

It is with a fair amount of certainty the one can state today the importance of the Vienna School of art history for the Polish art historians at the beginning of the XX century, in the interwar period or the 1960s and 1970s, yet very little is known about the years in-between. It is commonly accepted that strong anti-German sentiment during the second half of the 1940s and the domination of the soviet doctrine in the first half of the 1950s both complicated further dissemination of works and methods of the Viennese scholars. A closer look at the matter would suggest that their works and ideas remained present in the polish art history of the period, allowing it to serve as a chain link between the interwar years and the development of the discipline in the following decades.