Throughout the Cold War, the creation and reception of art in Germany was inseparably linked to divided political realities. Artists in East and West Germany redeployed the traditions of abstraction and realism in new national and international contexts, creating a wide range of powerful artworks, often responding to popular culture and technologies of reproduction.

This substantial and profusely illustrated book, with sixteen important essays by major art historians and cultural critics, is the first comprehensive look at the full extent of postwar German art. It includes work by Georg Baselitz, Willi Baumeister, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Joseph Beuys, Hanne Darboven, Hermann Gloeckner, Hannah Hoech, Joerg Immendorf, Anselm Kiefer, Blinky Palermo, A. R. Penck, Gerhard Richter, Rosemarie Trockel, Werner Tubke, Wolf Vostell, and many others.

Art of Two Germanys/Cold War Cultures is the catalogue for a groundbreaking international exhibition that reveals for the first time the contribution of both Germanys to the development of contemporary art.