A Preliminary Research on the Art Exchange Activities Between China and the GDR from 1949 to 1989

After the end of the Second World War, Germany was divided into two parts. The political, economic, cultural, and artistic policies implemented by the German Democratic Republic (also known as East Germany), dominated by socialist ideology, followed the pace of the Soviet Union. At the beginning of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, it maintained friendly and cooperative relations with Eastern European countries such as the GDR. It organized a variety of exchange activities at the cultural level. From the perspective of the sociology of art, this paper discusses the foreign exchange strategies of the founding of China and the Eastern European countries that were also socialist camps, especially the art development of the GDR. At the same time, it sorts out the art exchange activities and interactive trajectories between China and the GDR from 1949 to 1989, thus deepening the understanding of cultural exchanges with foreign countries during the construction of China.