15/11/2022
The Transition from Socialist Unions of Artists to Democratic Artistic Unions: the case of Romania
Between 1940 and 1957, and following the Soviet model, the countries of Eastern Europe (re)established Unions of Artists whose goal was to help consolidate Socialist Realism, the official style imposed by Moscow. Thus, the first ones to see the creation of unions of artists were the Baltic countries and Moldova (the unions in Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia (1941), and Moldova – 1944, all subordinated to the USSR Artists’ Association), Bulgaria (1944), Serbia (1944), and Yugoslavia (1947); Poland (1945); Hungary (1949); Albania (1949/1957); Romania (1950); East Germany (1950/2) and Czechoslovakia (1957).
The Fine Arts Union (UAP) of the Popular/Socialist Republic of Romania was an organization created by the communist regime in 1950. Inspired by the Soviet model as well, it built on the previous form of organization of Romanian artists, the Syndicate of Fine Arts (SAF). At first sight, the UAP was an institution for which ideological control was paramount, that granted privileges to professional artists and benefits, otherwise inaccessible to state employees. The UAP intermediated the relation between the artist and the state political and cultural institutions, being submitted formally to the Romanian Workers’/Communist Party and the Minister of Culture and under the surveillance of the secret police, the Securitate. Although apparently a centralizing institution, its institutional practice shows that it was in fact a pluri-institutional landscape in which the UAP surveyed and coordinated connected organizations (FP, CFP), but it was also itself submitted to a form of controlled autonomy by the Ministry of Culture. Throughout the four decades of communism, the Union became self-sufficient, passing from a privileged position in the 1950s to the limitation of its financial resources by the state in the 1980s.
After the transition to democracy of Romania of 1990, the UAP as the other unions in the former communist countries, became a democratic organization, an NGO. The ideological function of art was abandoned, and public orders stopped being organized in the same manner as by the communist regime, which limited the influence of the UAP. From an institutional perspective, the Union lost, by the return of lost properties and selling, its monopoly on its headquarters, studios of creation for artists, galleries and art shops. The transition to democracy signified the beginning of an important material loss and the redefinition of its role in relation to artists as the number of its members grew exponentially especially in 1990. Moreover, the autonomy gained by certain local branches and the contestation of the domination of the Union on the other local entities that have taken up its name has marked the evolution of the Union after 1990.
