Stage director, creator of happenings, painter, scenery designer, writer, art theoretician, actor in his own productions, and lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow where he was first educated. Kantor was inspired by Constructivism, Dada, Informal Art, and Surrealism. He mounted his first productions - Jean Cocteau's "Orpheus", Juliusz Slowaki's "Balladyna", and Stanislaw Wyspianski's "The Return of Odysseus" - with an underground theatre company that performed in private homes. Immediately after the war, he worked as a scenery designer (primarily abstract scenery) on a regular basis through the end of the 1960s. 1955 was an important year for he led a group of visual artists, art critics, and art theoreticians in creating the Cricot 2 Theatre, in which he would develop and test his creative ideas. In "Circus" this technique took the form of black bags in which the artist tightly wrapped his actors. The packaging was designed to strip actors and objects of their characteristic forms, turning them into indistinguishable substance. "Emballage" was followed by "Informal Theatre" (1960-62) and followed by "Zero Theatre" (1962-1964), which was stripped of all action and the transpiring of any events. The evolution of his stage practice and aesthetics had brought Kantor to the limits of all traditional concepts of theatre. In 1965 he proceeded to mount Poland's first-ever happenings but his disappointment with happenings as a creative direction brought Kantor back to the theatre. Kantor developed another phase in his theatre, a direction the artist named the "Theatre of Death". It is this phase that includes what are considered the artist's most exceptional and best known productions, the primary motif of which is death, transcendence, as well as memory and the history inscribed in memory. "The Dead Class" (1975) maybe has become the most famous of Kantor's theatre pieces. It was shown all over the world, winning many prizes like the Obie in New York in 1980. Within the piece, Kantor himself took the role of a master of ceremonies, conducting his actors - seemly dead characters who are confronted by mannequins which represented their younger selves. A bronze representing this piece has being erected on his grave. (after M. Kitowska-Lysiak)
Stage director, creator of happenings, painter, scenery designer, writer, art theoretician, actor in his own productions, and lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow where he was first educated. Kantor was inspired by Constructivism, Dada, Informal Art, and Surrealism. He mounted his first productions - Jean Cocteau's "Orpheus", Juliusz Slowaki's "Balladyna", and Stanislaw Wyspianski's "The Return of Odysseus" - with an underground theatre company that performed in private homes. Immediately after the war, he worked as a scenery designer (primarily abstract scenery) on a regular basis through the end of the 1960s. 1955 was an important year for he led a group of visual artists, art critics, and art theoreticians in creating the Cricot 2 Theatre, in which he would develop and test his creative ideas. In "Circus" this technique took the form of black bags in which the artist tightly wrapped his actors. The packaging was designed to strip actors and objects of their characteristic forms, turning them into indistinguishable substance. "Emballage" was followed by "Informal Theatre" (1960-62) and followed by "Zero Theatre" (1962-1964), which was stripped of all action and the transpiring of any events. The evolution of his stage practice and aesthetics had brought Kantor to the limits of all traditional concepts of theatre. In 1965 he proceeded to mount Poland's first-ever happenings but his disappointment with happenings as a creative direction brought Kantor back to the theatre. Kantor developed another phase in his theatre, a direction the artist named the "Theatre of Death". It is this phase that includes what are considered the artist's most exceptional and best known productions, the primary motif of which is death, transcendence, as well as memory and the history inscribed in memory. "The Dead Class" (1975) maybe has become the most famous of Kantor's theatre pieces. It was shown all over the world, winning many prizes like the Obie in New York in 1980. Within the piece, Kantor himself took the role of a master of ceremonies, conducting his actors - seemly dead characters who are confronted by mannequins which represented their younger selves. A bronze representing this piece has being erected on his grave. (after M. Kitowska-Lysiak)
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