This book is a substantial reconsideration of the cultural reconstruction of Western Europe during the Cold War. Until very recently, scholars have tended to focus on the clash between the US and the USSR, treating Europe as a more or less neutral battleg. This book is one of the few English-language accounts of Italian painting of the immediate post-war period - the last substantial monograph was published in 1959. The more contemporary literature is pretty much confined to exhibition catalogues, and the sole chapter in the recently published Open University textbook was clearly written by someone who does not read Italian. Thus it is limited in its scope, and is not as balanced or accurate as it might be. This book is the first ever consideration of the cultural dimension of 'Idea of Europe' campaign, the Council of Europe's strategy for promoting European integration launched in 1955/6, and for combating the spread of communism. This initiative is easy to overlook because it was pursued through bi-lateral cultural conventions between European states. Consequently, this study offers a new insight into the procedural workings of European integrationist institutions in the post-war period, and how the fine arts operated within them.

In addition to its consideration of little-known Italian art, this book will acquaint readers with art from the immediate post-war period from a global range of countries, for which there is currently a very limited bibliography. Taking in aspects of Eastern Bloc, Latin American and Middle Eastern painting, and looking at cultural policy within the Warsaw Pact and the Non-aligned Movement as well as in those countries allied with the West, this study offers an account of how gesture painting in particular served a range of sometimes opposing politics and ideologies.