Connections between the GDR and Latin America

Elena Shtromberg is Associate Professor of art history at the University of Utah. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary Latin American visual culture. In 2021 she was a Fellow at the Chair of Visual Studies in a Global Context at TU Dresden, researching the art relations of the GDR and Latin America.

Mail Art in particular, an artistic exchange by mail, offered various protagonists the opportunity to get in touch with each other through a flexible network. Based in Berlin, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt (b. 1932) and Robert Rehfeldt (1931-1993) were important protagonists in this international network, through Mail Art, they came into contact with Paulo Bruscky (b. 1949) from Brazil, among others. Exhibitions on "art by mail" were organized by the Rehfeldts (for example in 1979 at the Arkade Gallery in East Berlin) as well as by Clemente Padín in Latin America.