Tadeusz Kantor (1915-1990), Christ, ca. 1941

oil, canvas / 63.7 x 53.3 cm [clear frame].
77.8 x 67.3 cm, dimensions with frame
signature p.d.: 'TKant'
inventory number: UK/mk/24/6/2020/d
ORIGIN:
from the collection endowed by Kantor, Kraków 1941- 2020
creator, Kraków 1940/1941

Tadeusz Kantor, director, creator of happenings, painter, stage designer, writer, art theorist, actor in his own productions, lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, one of the most outstanding artists of the second half of the 20th century. Born in 1915 in Wielopole Skrzyńskie in the Tarnów region, he died in 1990 in Cracow. In Cracow, he was one of the most important figures in artistic life. Just after World War II, he co-founded the Group of Young Artists (1945). Kantor studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow (1934-39), where his teacher included Karol Frycz, painter and stage designer.
Already during the occupation, he created an underground experimental theater in Cracow, which played a unifying role for the art community. Just after the war, he briefly painted figurative paintings, filled with grotesquely simplified figures. Later came the time of dynamic metaphorical compositions with sparing, cool colors. Kantor also created numerous assemblages and ambalages - semi-spatial compositions.
"He is to Polish art what Joseph Beuys is to German art and Andy Warhol is to American art. Creator of a completely separate vision of theater, active participant in neo-avant-garde revolutions, original theoretician, innovator deeply rooted in tradition, anti-painter, happener-heretic, ironic conceptualist - these are just some of his many images. In addition to all this, Kantor was a tireless animator of artistic life in postwar Poland, one could say - one of its main driving forces."