The arrest of Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia on 12 September 1974 marked the end of almost a thousand years of rule by the Solomonic dynasty, a royal family claiming descent from the biblical King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Haile Selassie’s deposition has been described as the culmination of a “creeping coup”, following a decade of protests against the Emperor, often led … Continue reading The Art of Revolutionary Ethiopia
On 15 September 1959, Nikita Khrushchev became the first Soviet leader to visit the United States. Over the course of 12 days, he travelled from Washington, DC to New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose (to witness the birth of the computer age at IBM’s headquarters), Des Moines and Coon Rapids in Iowa, and Pittsburgh, ending his whistle-stop tour in a summit with President … Continue reading Khrushchev in America
The Spanish Civil War, which for almost three years from 17 July 1936 tore the European nation apart, resulted in 1939 in the establishment of a military dictatorship under the formidable General Francisco Franco. During World War II, the Spanish autocrat provided strategic support to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, repaying the countries’ backing of his Nationalist rebels during the Civil War. But in the advent of … Continue reading Spain’s Anti-Francoist Art
1956 was a heady year of protest against the repressive Communist governments that controlled much of Central and Eastern Europe. The most famous uprising of that year is the Hungarian Revolution, a nationwide rebellion that was brutally suppressed by invading Soviet forces. Espionart has previously explored this landmark Cold War episode by looking at József Jakovits’s poignant biomorphic sketches, which chronicled the revolutionaries’ fight against … Continue reading Painting the Red Plague
The execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg at sundown on 19 June 1953 was one of the darkest moments in recent US history. The married couple were the only American civilians to be put to death for espionage-related activity during the Cold War, after they were convicted of passing top secret information to the Soviets. Their deaths left their two young sons orphaned. It was … Continue reading Art in Defence of the Rosenbergs
Although the revolutions of 1989 are commemorated as marking the fall of the Soviet Union, many consider that the beginning of the end was 33 years earlier, in 1956. At the start of that year, on 25 February, new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev delivered the ground-breaking speech “On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences” to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet … Continue reading Drawing the Hungarian Revolution
A worthy analysis of the impact of the Cold War on Robert Rauschenberg warrants more than a single post. The American pop artist frequently chronicled major geopolitical events resulting from the clash between competing superpowers, as well as commenting on the daily tensions of life in the shadow of the mushroom cloud. Perhaps the most obvious is his series of prints entitled Soviet/American Array, produced … Continue reading Featured Artist: Robert Rauschenberg
On 2 May 1957 the notorious Republican senator Joseph McCarthy died. Throughout the 1950s, McCarthy’s virulent brand of anti-communism terrorised and stultified US society, leading many innocent people to lose their livelihoods and driving some to suicide. At the height of the McCarthyist witch-hunts the senator even threw accusations of communist infiltration at the US State Department, the Truman administration, Voice of America and the US … Continue reading The Revenge of the Blacklisted Artist
ESPIONART 