Migros Museum showcases the Art & Theatre of Tadeusz Kantor

Written by Jerri Dykeman Thursday, 07 April 2011 00:45

Zurich, Switzerland - Tadeusz Kantor (born 1915 in Wielopole Skrzyńskie, died 1990 in Krakow) is regarded as one of the most significant Polish artists of the 20^th century. Alongside his work as a visual artist he was also a theatre reformer influenced by avant-garde artists Antonin Artaud and Alfred Jarry, and also attracted by the Bauhaus theatre. Kantor was particularly interested in breaking the illusion created by classical theatre, and used alienation or defamiliarisation techniques revealing the artificiality of classical stage production, thus forcing an opening through to real life. On exhibit at Migros Museum until 16 November.

Kantor was among those artists of the 20^th century who proclaimed and practiced a concept of art transgressing all its boundaries. The artist attained world renown in the 1970s with the travelling theatre group Cricot², which he established in the mid-1950s.

In place of a classical retrospective, structured according to periods and categories, the exhibition in the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst is informed by a free scenic character, which attempts to exhibit Kantor’s works as a Gesamtkunstwerk. This concept held true for Kantor throughout his life. The focal point is the investigation of the performative, and the crossover between theatre and the visual arts. The exhibition offers, for the first time in Switzerland, a comprehensive overview of Kantor’s versatility – from his theatre productions and actions to his painterly and sculptural works. Alongside films, drawings, paintings and theatre sculptures, the “happening photography” of Eustachy Kossakowski (1925-2001), who documented Kantor’s artistic output for decades, will be exhibited for the first time. 

Before Kantor became known as a theatre director in the 1970s he had already been active, following his studies in the 1930s at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, as a visual artist, theatre director, stage designer and art and theatre theoretician. In his student years the publication Die Bühne im Bauhaus (The Stage in the Bauhaus) (1925) by Oskar Schlemmer, László Moholy-Nagy and Farkas Molnar had exercised a great influence over him and sparked his interests in constructivist theatre. The ideas of abstraction and the nature of the construction of a theatre production were reflected in his work over decades – based on Schlemmer’s notion that the person on the stage should become a Kunstfigur (art figure). Just like Schlemmer, Kantor made a link between his theatre and the characters of carnival theatre and the circus, considering them to be models. This is most obviously reflected in Kantor’s later decision to form a travelling theatre group going by the name Cricot² (from 1956), in which he himself was always present on stage “in persona”. 

Kantor was also active from the beginning of his artistic career as a visual artist. He initially drew more attention with his painting than with his work in the theatre. While he was still painting in a “kubisierenden Realismus” (cubist realist) style in the mid-1940s, he founded the Krakow Group, also known as the Krakow Group 2 in the mid-1950s, whose members adhered to an informal painting style. In 1959 Kantor was invited to documenta 2 – he was also invited to documenta 6 in 1977. In 1964 Kantor penned his Manifest d’emballages in Theodor Ahrenberg’s Atelier Le Rocher in Chexbres, near Vevey, where he was to stay frequently over longer periods. A body of works from the Ahrenberg collection will be displayed for the first time in the exhibition. 

“Not the work – product is important, not its ‘eternal’ and rigid appearance – but the very process of creation which unblocks the mental and spiritual activities, that is essential Motion, Mobility, life, which do not help in creating works, but are significant for themselves, infiltrating total reality, and changing its composition.”

The exhibition features more than sixty works from the mid-1940s to the end of the 1980s. Documentary happening photography by Eustachy Kossakowski will be exhibited for the first time. Furthermore, a selection of films such as The Dead Class (1975, director: Andrzej Wajda), his most renowned theatre piece of the 1970s, and Wielopole, Wielopole (1980, director: Andrzej Sapija) will be on show. Together with various theatre sculptures – such as the works Macchina dell'amore e della morte (1987) or Children at their desks from “The Dead Class”, (1989) – they form a dense overall installation. Other parts of the exhibition include drawings, paintings, collages and private archive material from the Ahrenberg collection.

A catalogue will appear for the exhibition which will publish documentary photographs of Kantor’s happenings by Eustachy Kossakowski for the first time. For more information please go to: www.migrosmuseum.ch or Email : info-at-migrosmuseum.ch

The exhibition is supported by the Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor CRICOTEKA, Krakow. http://www.cricoteka.com.pl/en/