Tadeusz Cantor

Tadeusz Cantor (1968)

Erling Mandelmann : production by Kantor (no year)

Tadeusz Kantor (born April 6, 1915 in Wielopole (Skrzyńskie) , Austria-Hungary , † December 8, 1990 in Krakow ) was a Polish theater director , painter , set designer and art theorist .

life and work

Kantor was the child of a Catholic and a Jew and grew up in a Galician town or shtetl . Kantor studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow (graduated in 1939). From 1942 to 1944, during the German occupation of Poland, he led the experimental Niezależny Teatr (Independent Theater) underground , the nucleus of all his later activities in the theater sector. In 1948 he became a professor at the art academy. Disappointed by the increasing institutionalization of the avant-garde , he and friends founded the Cricot 2 theater in 1955 , with which he has increasingly been staging his own productions and happenings in the form of the traveling circus since the 1960s. His particular preference was initially for the pieces by his Polish compatriot Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz ( W małym dworku (1961), Wariat i zakonnica (1963), Kurka wodna (1969)). Over the years Kantor began to add more and more elements to his own biography, v. a. of childhood, to include. With these pieces, which did not have a static arrangement, but were "directed" and designed by Kantor himself, who was mostly present on the stage, the theater maker gradually achieved world renown. In the 1975 play Umarła Klasa (The Dead Class), he confronted B. as a teacher his now dead classmates with jointed dolls that represented their still young counterparts. Other projects of this kind followed, including the unfinished piece Dzisiaj są moje urodziny (Today is my birthday), during which Kantor unexpectedly died during rehearsals. As foreseen by him, his pieces can no longer be performed after his death because they were so strongly tied to his physical presence on stage. Nevertheless, Kantor is considered one of the most important representatives of the theater of the absurd .

At the same time, he was also active as an art and theater theorist and above all as a painter. Here he founded various artist groups after 1945. He himself initially painted more in the style of surrealism , before moving to representationalism in the mid-1960s. Tadeusz Kantor was a participant in documenta II (1959) and also in documenta 6 in 1977 in Kassel . In 1978 he was awarded the Rembrandt Prize of the Goethe Foundation in Basel for his work .

Plays and productions

Mątwa , 1956
Cyrk , 1957
W małym dworku , 1961
Wariat i zakonnica , 1963
Kurka vodna , 1967
Nadobnisie i koczkodany , 1973
Umarła klasa , 1975
Wielopole, Wielopole , 1980
Niech sczezną artyści , 1985
Nigdy tu już nie powrócę , 1988
( Dzisiaj są moje urodziny ), 1991

Umarła klasa - sculpture and performance

Set design for Umarła klasa , 1975

The play Umarła klasa , Die tote Klasse, is a drama and happening with autobiographical references (productions see above ) and can still be viewed as a sculpture today. It has also been referred to as the theater of death. A copy with four ascending benches can be seen in the collection of the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich. The eight “pupil” dolls in the rows of benches have a strong presence in the arrangement, which many viewers interpret as threatening. Paradoxically, the life-size dolls look like old men thanks to their painting and hair replacement . The materials used are reminiscent of poverty, which here is a sign of hopelessness.

A group of photos from the first production in 1975 is also on display there. Photographer: Wojtek Sperl (* 1950), location: Galerie Krzysztofory, Kraków (Kraków, southern Poland). In 1976 Andrzej Wajda filmed a production with Tadeusz Kantor as acting director of the group Cricot2 and actor.

literature

Institute for Modern Art Nuremberg (Ed.): Tadeusz Kantor - Theater des Todes, Die tote Klasse, Wielopole - Wielopole , photographed by Günther K. Kühnel, Verlag für moderne Kunst Zirndorf, 1983, ISBN 3-922531-21-0 (illustrated book with photographs by Günther K. Kühnel and texts by Tadeusz Kantor, Walter Fenn and Günther K. Kühnel).

Günther K. Kühnel (Ed.): Kantor - “The artists should die” , scroll texts and 16 camera images photographed by Günther K. Kühnel, Fürth, 1987 (cassette with camera images by G. Kühnel and role texts published for the first time by T. Kantor. Limited and numbered edition of 500 copies)

Harald Xander (Ed.): Jan Klossowicz. Tadeusz Kantors Theater , Francke, Tübingen 1995.

Dietmar Wiewiora: Matter, collective memory and individual existence in the theater by Tadeusz Kantor (1938-1991) , Universitas, Kraków 1998, 228 pp.

Peter W. Marx: Theater and cultural memory. Cultural semiotics studies on George Tabori , Tadeusz Kantor and Rina Yerushalmi. Francke, Tübingen 2003, 490 pages, ISBN 3-7720-2795-4 , dissertation at the University of Mainz

Uta Schorlemmer: Tadeusz Kantor. He was his theater , Verlag für moderne Kunst, Nuremberg 2005, 383 pages, ISBN 3-936711-88-7 (monograph and edition of the Milan lessons by Tadeusz Kantor and Tadeusz Kantor 1915-1990 and post mortem by Jan Kott ).

Uta Schorlemmer (Ed.): Art is a crime. Tadeusz Kantor, Germany and Switzerland , Verlag für moderne Kunst, Nuremberg 2007, 490 pages, ISBN 978-3-938821-68-8 (with contributions by Christian Boltanski , Andrea Breth , Hans-Thies Lehmann , Luk Perceval , Günther Rühle , Andrzej Wajda ) and a.

Web links

Commons : Tadeusz Kantor - collection of images, videos and audio files

personal data
SURNAME	Cantor, Tadeusz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Polish theater director, painter, set designer and art theorist
DATE OF BIRTH	April 6, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH	Wielopole Skrzyńskie
DATE OF DEATH	December 8, 1990
Place of death	Krakow , Poland