Dr. Simone Wille
Senior Scientist
Mail: simone.wille@uibk.ac.at
Forschungsschwerpunkte
- Transnationale Kunst der Moderne
- (Kritische) Globale Kunstgeschichte
- Südasiatische Kunst
- Das Nachleben von Archiven
- Transregionaler Kunstaustausch während der Zeit des Kalten Krieges
- Migration und Repräsentationspolitik
Kurz-CV
Simone Wille ist Senior Scientist am Institut für Kunstgeschichte der Universität Innsbruck. Sie studierte Kunstgeschichte in Innsbruck, Rom, London und Wien, wo sie auch promovierte. Sie leitete die Forschungsprojekte „Südasien in Mitteleuropa: Die Mobilität von Künstlern und Kunstwerken zwischen 1947 und 1989“ (V880-G) (2021–2025) und „Transregionale Routen: Die Materialität von Kunstwerken und ihre Bedeutung in der Moderne. Bombay, Paris, Prag, Lahore, ca. 1920er bis Anfang der 1950er Jahre“ (P29536-G26) (2016–2021). Beide Projekte wurden von Österreichischer Wissenschaftsfonds FWF gefördert. Sie forschte viele Jahre in Pakistan, Indien, Bangladesch, Iran, Italien, Frankreich, Tschechien, Slowakei, Slowenien, Polen und Großbritannien. Ihre Forschungsschwerpunkte sind historische und künstlerische Kontakte sowie die kulturelle Mobilität zwischen Süd- und Westasien und Europa in der Moderne. Sie untersucht dabei das Weiterleben von Archiven. Zu Willes Veröffentlichungen gehören Cold War Art Worlds: South Asian Art and Artists in Prague (Leuven: Leuven Univ. Press, 2025), Modern Art in Pakistan. History, Tradition, Place (New Delhi: Routledge, 2015) sowie die gemeinsam herausgegebenen Bände Collecting Asian Art: Cultural Politics & Transregional Networks in Twentieth-Century Central Europe (Leuven: Leuven Univ. Press, 2024) und André Lhote and His International Students (Innsbruck: Innsbruck university press, 2020).
Aktuelle Publikationen
Simone Wille: Cold War Art Worlds: South Asian Art and Artists in Prague, 1947-1989
Cold War Art Worlds by Simone Wille examines how Prague became a pivotal hub for South Asian artists between 1947 and 1989. Treating cultural mobility as a catalyst for exchange and network building, the book complicates Cold War binaries of East and West. Drawing on extensive archival research, Wille reveals new narratives of decolonisation, migratory aesthetics, and transnational artistic solidarity that reshape global modernisms.
Zeynep Kuban, Simone Wille (eds.), André Lhote and His International Students, Innsbruck: iup, 2020.
Klappentext
Bücher
The Afterlives of Cold War Archives: South Asian Artists’ Personal Letters in Prague Archives (in Vorbereitung)
Modern Art in Pakistan: History, Tradition, Place, New Delhi and London: Routledge, 2015.
Cold War Art Worlds: South Asian Art and Artists in Prague, Leuven: Leuven Univ. Press, 2025.
Bücher in Herausgeberschaft
Markéta Hánová, Yuka Kadoi, Simone Wille (eds.), Collecting Asian Art: Cultural Politics & Transregional Networks in Twentieth-Century Central Europe, Leuven: Leuven Univ. Press, 2024.
Zeynep Kuban, Simone Wille (eds.), André Lhote and His International Students (Innsbruck: Innsbruck university press, 2020).
Zeitsprünge, Raumfolgen, Ausstellung im Rahmen der Serie „Islamische Welten,“ mitherausgegeben von Barbara Barsch, ifa-gallery Berlin and Stuttgart, Oktober 2005. 72 Seiten.
Aufsätze in Zeitschriften (Auswahl seit 2019-2025)
“Modern Indian Painters by Vlado Kubenko: Cold War Cultural Relationships and Czechoslovak
Engagement with Indian Modernist Art,” in Kino-Ikon—A Journal for The Sciences of the Moving
Image and Cinema, Vol. 29, no. 1 (57), 2025, 81-92.
“Transformation as an Artistic Strategy in the Work of the Artist Anwar Saeed,” Venezia Arti, Series
5, Vol. 32, Dec. 2023, https://doi.org/10.30687/VA/2385-2720/2023/01/010
“The Significance of Mobility and the Artistic Practice of Zahoor ul Akhlaq,” The Journal of
Transcultural Studies, Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023, Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing.
https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.jts.2022.1-2.24802
“Chittaprosad in the Collection of the National Gallery Prague,” in The Bulletin of the National
Gallery Prague, Prague: The National Gallery, 2020. 6-21; 137-149.
”A Transnational Socialist Solidarity: Chittaprosad’s Prague Connection,” in “Modernism in
Migration,” Stedelijk Studies, Issue #9, Amsterdam: Fall 2019, n. p. https://stedelijkstudies.com
Aufsätze in Sammelbänden (Auswahl 2019-2026)
“The Question of Location: The Makeshift Hotel Room as Site of Production,” in Infrastructures of
Art Producing, Transporting, and Logistics from a Transnational Perspective, Burcu Dogramaci,
Ursula Ströbele (eds.), Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2026, 155-163.
“Collecting Asian Art: Central Europe’s Transregional Connectivity,” in Collecting Asian Art:
Cultural Politics and Transregional Networks in Twentieth-Century Central Europe, Markéta
Hánová, Yuka Kadoi, and Simone Wille (eds.), Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2023, 9-28.
https://lup.be/products/185906 DOI: 10.11116/9789461665409
“M. F. Husain’s Work in the collection of the National Gallery in Prague: Connecting East and West,”
in Collecting Asian Art: Cultural Politics and Transregional Networks in Twentieth-Century Central
Europe, Markéta Hánová, Yuka Kadoi, and Simone Wille (eds.), Leuven: Leuven University Press,
2023, 171-185. https://lup.be/products/185906 DOI: 10.11116/9789461665409
“Of Centres, Peripheries, Values, and Judgements. Simone Wille in Conversation with Partha Mitter
on ‘Decentering Modernism’ and Modernist Routes beyond Western Europe,” in Collecting Asian
Art: Cultural Politics and Transregional Networks in Twentieth-Century Central Europe, Markéta
Hánová, Yuka Kadoi, and Simone Wille (eds.), Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2023, 205-216.
https://lup.be/products/185906 DOI: 10.11116/9789461665409
“The Prague Connection of Chittaprosad (1915-1978)”, in 20th Century Indian Art: Moderns, Post-
Independence, Contemporary, Partha Mitter, Parul Dave Mukherji, Rakhee Balaram (eds.), London:
Thames and Hudson, 2023, 120.
“A Short History of Art in Pakistan”, in 20th Century Indian Art: Moderns, Post-Independence,
Contemporary, Partha Mitter, Parul Dave Mukherji, Rakhee Balaram (eds.), London: Thames and
Hudson, 2023, 604-611.
“The Lidice Collection of Postwar Modernist Art. An Art History Informed by Engagement and
Circulation” in Come Closer. The Biennale Reader, Vít Havránek, Tereza Stejskalová (eds.), Prague
and Berlin: tranzit and Sternberg Press, 2020, 51-72.
“The Salzburg Summer Academy and its Early Transnational Relations,” in Navigating the Planetary.
A guide to the planetary art world—it’s past, present, and potentials, Hildegund Amanshauser,
Kimberley Bradley (eds.), Wien: Verlag für moderne Kunst (VfmK), 59-76.
“St. Margarethen: Ein Experimentierfeld der transnationalen Nachkriegsmoderne,“ in Kunst und
Literatur. Der Literatur Raum im Bildhauerhaus in St. Margarethen im Burgenland, Beatrice
Simonsen (ed.), Wien: 2019, Verlag für moderne Kunst, 8-13.
Konferenzen und Vorträge (Auswahl 2021-2026)
Buch Präsentation: Academy of Fine Arts (AVU), Prague. In conversation with Przemysław
Strożek, Aleksei Borisionok, and Miloslav Vorlíček. 2026.
Paper presentation: South Asian Art and Artists in Central Europe: 1947-1989,
international conference Global and forgotten connections: the circulation of visual arts between socialist European countries and Asia, Latin America and Africa during the Cold War, Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2026.
Vortrag: École des modernités, Giacometti Foundation, Paris, Postwar Art Worlds and Codes of
Affiliations: South Asian artists Shakir Ali, Krishna Reddy and Ram Kumar. 2026.
https://www.fondation-giacometti.fr/en/event/368/postwar-art-worlds-and-codes-of-affiliationssouth-asian-artists-shakir-ali-krishna-reddy-and-ram-kumar
Buch Präsentation: Alserkal Arts Foundation, Dubai. In conversation with Diva Gujral.
2025.
Paper presentation: Krishna Reddy and Central Europe, Krishna Reddy Symposium, New York
Print Center, 2025, Zoom.
Paper presentation: A Czechoslovak-Indian Connection in Filmmaking: Radical and Innocent
Puppets, international conference Repositioning the Postwar Avant-Garde in the East, Archiv der
Avantgarden, Staatliche Kunstsammlung Dresden, Dresden, 2025.
Panel member: Art, Philanthropy, and Decolonial Futures, Prince Claus Fund, University of
Amsterdam, 2024.
Projekt Präsentation: Introducing the Zahoor ul Akhlaq Archive, Mobilities, Forms, and
Geographies: From the Photographic Archive of Zahoor ul Akhlaq, Asia Art Archive (AAA), New
Delhi and Hong Kong, 2024, Zoom.
Mit-organisatorin und Moderatorin des Symposium zu Ehren von Prof. Ebba Koch, A
Transdisciplinary Approach to Mughal Studies, March 15, Österreichsiche Akademie der
Wissenschaften, Vienna, 2024.
Paper presentation: Postwar Print Art in Central Europe: South Asian artists’ mobility across
dividing lines. University of Graz, 2023.
Paper presentation, Ringvorlesung: Modernism as Collaborative Practice: The Académie André Lhote and Egypt (1920s to 1950s), Linz, Katholische Privatuniversität, 2023.
Paper presentation: Modern Art in Pakistan, DAG and The Harrington Street Art Center, Kolkata, 2023.
Projekt Präsentation: Indian Artists in Central Europe, JNU, SAA II, Committee Room, 2023.
Ausstellung Eröffnungsrede: Beate Terfloth, Für die Vögel, Vogelhaus, Salzburg, 2023.
Moderation: Curatorial and artistic research: Exploring transregional and gendered trails in recent
East European art history, Leipzig, Tagungslounch, 2022.
Paper presentation: Transregional Trails of Artistic Production, Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte
LMU München, 2021.
Paper presentation: South Asia in Central Europe, GWZO Leipzig, 2021.
Paper presentation: Krishna Reddy between Santiniketan, London, Paris, Ljubljana, and Vienna:
Cold War Friendships and Networks, Collaborations and Aesthetic Solidarities. Paul Mellon Centre,
London, Asia, Art, Worlds, Conference, 2021.
Mit-organisatorin: Konferenz in Prague: Collecting Asian Art in Prague: Cultural Politics and
Transcontinental Networks in 20th Century Central Europe. Prague, 2021.
Paper presentation: M. F Husain’s (1915-2011) work in the collection of the National Gallery
Prague. An inquiry. Prague, Collecting Asian Art in Prague: Cultural Politics and Transcontinental
Networks in 20th Century Central Europe. Prague, 2021.
Aktuelle Mitgliedschaften in Beratungsgremien
Mitglied des Scientific Council of the National Gallery in Prague (2025-29)
Mitglied des Advisory Council, Mariam Dawood School of Visual Art and Design, Beaconhouse
National University, Lahore, Pakistan (2026-26)