Kantor exhibition in Brazil attracts record crowd
PR dla Zagranicy
Nick Hodge
24.11.2015 10:10
Over 90,000 people have visited an exhibition on the legacy of the Polish avant-garde artist Tadeusz Kantor in Sao Paolo, which was on display for three months.
Tadeusz Kantor. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Entitled ‘Tadeusz Kantor Machine: Theatre, happenings, performances, painting, other modes of production’, it included over 130 items: paintings, drawings, theatre props and their replicas, as well as rich photo and filmed documentation of the productions of Kantor’s Cricot-2 Theatre.
It was the most comprehensive exhibition on Kantor’s diverse artistic activity ever held abroad, and his first retrospective in Latin America.
The event was organized jointly by the Warsaw-based Adam Mickiewicz Institute, the Museum of Art in Łódź and Servico Social do Comercio Sao Paulo, Brazil’s leading cultural institution.
The exhibition was among the highlights of the Kantor Year, marking the centenary of the artist’s birth. It also included events in Britain, Italy, Germany and Japan.
Tadeusz Kantor‘s Cricot 2 Theatre, which was founded in 1955, first gained wide international reputation for its performances of plays by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy) – ‘The Cuttlefish’ and ‘The Water Hen’.
‘Dead Class’, Kantor’s personal evocation of the past, premiered in 1975, and it proved an unprecedented success, with over 1, 500 performances in Poland and many countries.
Kantor died in 1990. (mk/nh/rk)