The Great Painters
Tadeusz Kantor
- total artist, outstanding and timeless
ART VISIONARY
DIRECTOR AND CREATOR OF HAPPENINGS
INVENTOR OF EMBALLAGE
Tadeusz Kantor
(1915-1990)
He is considered to be the most outstanding artist in 20th century Poland. He was an inspired artist who took matters of art deadly seriously. During the years of the People's Republic of Poland he was our link with the world - like an emissary, he rode through the Iron Curtain, maintaining the bond of the Polish avant-garde with Europe. He was able to make painting out of anything. He started with elite art - at the end of his life he reached people all over the world. He gained world fame as a man of the theatre, but even on stage he remained a painter who thinks with pictures and uses actors and props instead of paint. He was versatile and it is risky to divide his work into individual "disciplines". Painting, to which he was faithful all his life, is one of the keys to understanding the artistic will. Tadeusz Kantor does not leave us alone, he still attracts our attention and forces us to reflect.
THE APOSTLE OF MODERNITY
SCENOGRAPH
Tadeusz Kantor
1915
On April 16th, Tadeusz Kantor, son of Marian and Maria of Berger, was born to the parsonage in Wielopolska. The father did not return to his family after the war and became a mythical figure for the artist, the hero of his play
1925
He started his studies at the secondary school in Tarnów and was already interested in art. As a 13-year-old boy he admired "Nero's Torches" Siemiradzki (1843-1902), Malczewski (1854-1929) and Wyspianski (1869-1907), dreaming of painting a picture "that would move".
1933
passed the baccalaureate exam in the 1st Grammar School in Tarnów
1934-39
he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, where he initially had "enough of himself" and only in Karol Frycz's studio (1877-1963), started "doing something on his own responsibility" and became involved in the Ephemeral Puppet Theatre
1943
premiere of "Balladyna" in the underground Independent Theatre. During the occupation he was the charismatic leader of "Grupa Krakowska", bringing together artists such as: Jerzy Nowosielski, Tadeusz Brzozowski, Janina Kraupe, Mieczysław Porębski.
1945-1961
Tadeusz Kantor's wife was Ewa Jurkiewicz
1949
with the Young Visual Artists Group, he organised the 1st Modern Art Exhibition, which was the last manifestation of modernity before the Socialist Realist period. Tadeusz Kantor was also dismissed from university
1950-1955
in the first half of the 1950s Tadeusz Kantor survived designing scenery and costumes for professional theatres - he was highly valued for his designs
1955
founded the Cricot 2 Theatre together with Maria Jarema, the first premiere of the group (1956) was "Mątwa" according to Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz.
Monument to a chair in Hucisko, from the cycle of "Monuments of the Impossible" by Tadeusz Kantor. Author of photography Michał Sapeta. Wikipedia.
1957
became the first President of the Krakow Group
1961
Tadeusz Kantor married Maria Stangret on 10 April
1965
seven months' stay in the USA. As an avant-garde artist, Tadeusz Kantor had the need to "keep up to date", he travelled to America, Paris, imported reproductions and the latest art recipes. He was the first to bring informel, conceptualism and happening to Poland.
1975
premiere of "Dead Class" in Krzysztofory - a spectacle that will shake the whole world
1978
received the Goethe Foundation Rembrandt Prix for painting
1980
premiere of the performance "Wielopole, Wielopole" in Florence. The 1980s are the great world tour of the Cricot 2 Theatre.
1990
Tadeusz Kantor suddenly died on 8 December in the morning, a few hours after rehearsal for the play 'Today is my birthday'. He was buried in the Rakowicki Cemetery. The last performance - with a symbolic scene of the artist's funeral - premiered in January 1991 in France, already without Kantor. Above his grave - Jerzy Nowosielski, a friend from the Krakow Group said that for Polish art the death of Tadeusz Kantor was a symbolic closure of the 20th century.
Interesting facts:
it's a circus
Tadeusz Kantor's greatest work is the theatre Cricot 2, founded in 1955. The name Cricot - referring to the pre-war theatre of Józef Jarema - is a French-sounding anagram of the phrase "it is a circus".
Ramamaganga
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