In 1964, the Internationale Kunstausstellung - Bildende Kunst an der Ostsee was upgraded to the Biennale der Ostseeländer by decision of the Council of Ministers of the GDR. The artistically responsible committee of the Biennale of the Baltic Sea Countries was initially fed by the artists and cultural workers involved in the previous exhibition. At its first meeting in 1964 in Kühlungsborn, this committee set the course for the new Biennale. Instead of a selection committee based in the GDR, the selection of works was determined by country commissioners in the participating countries. In addition, the international committee decided that the collections would be shown in their entirety in Rostock and could only be changed in consultation with the country commissioners. These stipulations enabled the exhibition to temporarily transcend the cultural-political boundaries of the GDR. In addition to the desired realistic, representational works, abstract, non-representational works were also presented.
Temporarily housed in the Museum of the City of Rostock, the exhibition showed works from all Baltic Sea countries and Norway. In addition to the country collections, the first Biennale of the Baltic Sea Countries featured a special exhibition of works by the Danish painter Victor Brockdorff and an exhibition of Rostock artists in the studio of Jo Jastram. The newly appointed secretary of the committee, Horst Zimmermann, was responsible for the organisation of the international show. He was also intended to be the director of the Kunsthalle Rostock, which was newly planned for the exhibition. Zimmermann had already acquired works from the 1st Biennale of the Baltic States in 1965 for the future collection of the museum. Most of the acquisitions came from non-socialist countries and ranged from representational graphic art from the FRG to abstract Finnish graphic art. The foreword by Otto Niemeyer-Holstein in the catalogue published for the exhibition referred to the desire to show the diversity of the artists' means of expression. Against the background of the restrictive cultural policy of the GDR, the range of works shown and also acquired for the Kunsthalle is the special feature of the biennials of the Baltic countries. The lithographs by Ronald Paris with a text by Wolf Biermann, which came into the Kunsthalle's holdings from the Biennale in 1965, are also special against the background of the official criticism of Biermann and the ban on publication and performance that followed in the autumn.
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