Perspectives on a transcultural art history of the GDR: Oliver Sukrow

The art historian Oliver Sukrow is a project assistant (PostDoc) in the FWF-funded project Transnational School Architecture: Austria, Slovenia, GDR at the Research Unit Art History of the TU Wien and a Fellow on the Wüstenrot Stiftung. His current post-doctoral project focuses on health resorts in the 19th and 20th centuries as alternative spaces of innovation, with a particular focus on the relationship between architecture, landscape and medicine.

In his research, Sukrow highlights, on the one hand, the international dimensions with references to the GDR in artists  biographies, especially of Lea Grundig and Josep Renau, as well as transnational school construction. On the other hand, he describes the stories of individual artworks that traveled, for example, because of exhibitions. In addition, in the video interview he speaks of the necessity of international research networking in order to illuminate topics through different perspectives. The interview took place during the conference The Global GDR - A Transcultural History of Art (1949-1990) organized by the TU Dresden and the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden at the Albertinum.

Publications (selection):

Sukrow, Oliver: Arbeit. Wohnen. Computer – Zur Utopie in der bildenden Kunst und Architektur der DDR in den 1960er Jahren, Heidelberg 2018.

Sukrow, Oliver (Hrsg.): Zwischen Sputnik und Ölkrise. Kybernetik in Architektur, Planung und Design, Berlin 2018.

Sukrow, Oliver: Lea Grundig: Sozialistische Künstlerin und Präsidentin des Verbandes Bildender Künstler in der DDR (1964-1970), DDR-Studien/ East German Studies, hrsg. v. Richard A. Zipser, Band 18, 2011.