Founded as an association of artists committed to international artist cooperation and to peace and democracy, the Artists' International Association (AIA) organised exhibitions. The 1937 exhibition Twentieth Century German Art featured works by exile artists living in the United Kingdom; it thus served as a counter-exhibition to the Nazi propaganda exhibition of Degenerate Art. In 1935 the AIA had begun a series of group exhibitions focussing on political and social issues.
According to its charter (shown here), the AIA encouraged the creation and development of new and existing organizations. In 1939, for instance, the Artists' Refugee Committee was established which helped to fetch the artists who had emigrated to Czechoslovakia to the United Kingdom, including Theo Balden. In line with its charter the association regularly staged joint exhibitions with organizations with similar objectives, e.g. with the Freier Deutscher Kulturbund: The Exhibition of English + Refugee Art, AIA and FGLC of Sculpture and AIA and FGLC Exhibition of Sculpture and Drawings.
The last major exhibition of German emigrants, Freie deutsche Kunst in June 1944, involving 48 artists such as Oskar Kokoschka, Heinz Worner and Theo Balden, was held under the patronage of the AIA, which also allowed the German artists to participate in the first International Artist Conference in April 1945.
The present copy of the charter of the AIA comes from the estate of the sculptor Theo Balden who had become a member of the organisation during his exile in the United Kingdom.