Tadeusz Kantor (1915–1990)

Director, organiser of “happenings”, painter, set designer, assemblage artist, writer, theoretician of art, actor in his own productions, lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. Together with Mari Jarem, Kantor established the Kraków Group and the Cricot 2 Theatre, which brought him world renown. His most famous works include: Travel Diary (Dziennik z podróży), Man and Table (Człowiek i stół), A Fatal Inversion (Niebezpieczne odwrócenie) as well as Return to Family Home (Powrót do domu rodzinnego), staged after the artist’s death, as well as the famous theatrical productions The Dead Class (Umarła Klasa) and Wielopole, Wielopole (Kantor was born in Wielopole Skrzyńskie near Rzeszów). The paintings of Tadeusz Kantor were mostly abstract, and were frequently connected to his artistic manifestoes. Operating today in Kraków is the Cricoteka Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor. Moreover, the artist’s last place of residence, on the corner of Sienna and Stolarska, has been preserved unchanged. Attempts to establish  the Kantor Museum have continued for years. Buried in the Rakowicki Cemetery. Today, Kantor is one of the most recognisable icons of Polish culture in the world.