A Ghost of Your Masterpiece. Correspondence Between Pawel Petasz and György Galántai (1978–2007)
A Ghost of Your Masterpiece. Correspondence Between Pawel Petasz and György Galántai (1978–2007)

Summary/Abstract: Pawel Petasz, Polish mail art artist, and György Galántai, artist and creator of the Artpool archive in Budapest, began collaborating and exchanging artistic artifacts and artistic ideas in 1978. Galántai, together with Julia Klaniczay, took up the idea of Commonpress - a magazine whose subsequent editions were created by various artists around the world. The Hungarian edition was entitled 'Hungary Can be Yours' and was the 51st issue of the magazine. The materials for this issue were collected on the worldwide mail art network, in which both artists, Petasz and Galántai, functioned. They were shown in an exhibition in Budapest, which, however, was blocked by the Hungarian secret police. A police report on this exhibition is being published along with other material accompanying this article. The article is based on the Artpool archive. It presents a bibliography of publications and mail art artifacts collected in Artpool. The history described and analyzed in this article contributes to the understanding of both the conditions of cultivating creativity in countries behind the Iron Curtain, and the specificity of the functioning of the mail art network as a mechanism of artistic creation on a global scale.

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