Tadeusz Kantor (1915 - 1990), Man with a Cigarette

pastel, marker, paper, 22, 2 x 16 cm, signed p. d.: 'T. Kantor'



In 1934-39, he studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow under W. Jarocki and J. Pieńkowski and stage design under K. Frycz. During the occupation, he ran the Conspiracy Theater in Cracow. In 1947 he was on a one-year scholarship in Paris; from 1957 he was associated with the avant-garde Second Kraków Group. He was an animator and co-creator of the experimental theater Cricot 2, founded in 1955. From the mid-1950s he practiced informel painting - spontaneous, unconstrained by aesthetics. Kantor's numerous series of paintings from the 1970s and 1980s show a strong connection with his simultaneous theatrical activity, for example, while working on the play "The Dead Class," a series of compositions with the same title were created. In the later period, the artist devoted himself mainly to theater, while he returned to painting in the last years of his life.