Ever since the founding of the Museum for Modern Art (Mumok) in Vienna, there have been strong ties between Vienna and Eastern-Europe, but it wasn't until recently that those ties started working both ways.

From the 1970s on, the Austrian institution has collected work by Eastern-European artists, including several Bulgarian artists. But the most Austrian of all art-trends, Viennese Actionism, never fell on Bulgarian soil.

That is, until now.

On June 12 2009, a long-overdue exhibition with major works from the Mumok collection opened in Sofia's City Gallery (SCG).

The inauguration was overseen by Bulgarian Culture Minister Stefan Danailov, his Austrian counterpart Claudia Schmied and Edelbert Köb, Mumok director.

The current show in Sofia includes works by Otto Meuhl, Günter Brus, Hermann Nitsch, Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Arnulf Rainer, Valie Export and Marina Abramovic and even several Ives Klein works.

The exhibition is intended as the start of a series of collaborative exhibitions between Mumok and SCG, Köb said.

"I congratulate the city gallery, that it had the courage to start with Viennese Actionism," Köb said, adding that a less controversial topic could have been chosen.

Viennese Actionism, which took place between 1960 and 1971 in Vienna, was part of many independent efforts around that time to develop a form of action art. It has influenced many artists and art forms since, including Eastern-European performance art of the 1990s.

"In the early 1990s, Bulgarian artist Ventsislav Tzankov did a series of performances that were strongly influenced by Viennese Actionism, but which commented on the local situation," SCG chief curator Maria Vassileva said.

"Ten years ago we talked about doing an exhibition like this," Vassileva said. "But Bulgaria and Bulgarian society were not yet ready."

If the full hall at openings-night was any indication, that definitely is no longer the case.