And drawings as random notes. Works by Tadeusz Kantor from the Roman collection of Stefania and Dario Piga at the “Café Europa” exhibition.

In mid-November, a very intriguing exhibition was opened, presenting, for the first time, to the Polish audience several dozen works by Tadeusz Kantor from the private collection of Roman collectors, Stefania and Dario Piga, who particularly focus their attention on art from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, that are just developing and opening to the West. The exhibition is titled “Tadeusz Kantor. Café Europa”, which is a direct reference to the short essay written by Kantor.

About the collection’s history

How did it happen that Kantor, it would seem, someone we know well and whose works were often exhibited in Cracow, comes to us with something completely new? Well, it naturally springs from the history of the collection just presented. This matter dates back to 1989 when Stefania Piga came to Poland for some time to familiarize herself with the local art market. During her stay, she met many fascinating artists, the brightest star indubitably being Kantor himself. Greatly impressed by him as an artist and the entire spectrum of his work, the collector revealed to him that she wanted to inaugurate the newly established Spicchi del Est art gallery in Rome with an exhibition of Kantor’s works. The artist agreed to this proposal and, what’s more, he agreed to take up the position of the artistic director of this place, whose vital mission was to present the art of the East that had just been freed from the shackles of communism. For the exhibition, the artist wrote a poetic declaration, which he gave a significant title: “Café Europa”. He also proposed that the gallery be given the same name. The text was accompanied by a graphic commentary that took the sparing form of a spiral composed of the names of the most important, according to Kantor himself, creators of European culture and art. Kantor’s declaration sounded as follows and ended with an almost prophetic call:

They all died in the name of the Spirit of the

European culture

There is but one Europe!

There, at the fork of the roads of Time, there

Has to exist a “Café Europe”… How many are

Already there…

The true eternal Europe! Just try to propose

such ridiculous barriers in the “Café Europe”

The exhibition was received with extraordinary enthusiasm, gathering the most important Polish and Italian representatives of the cultural fields. Young Vittorio Sgarbi, who later became a prominent politician and also an art critic, before each of Kantor’s works initiated peculiar dialogues, constituted an additional “enlivenment” and an invitation to the audience to participate in a critical discussion about the art of the Kraków artist.

Despite the announcement, Kantor did not take up the position of artistic director of the gallery, he did not make it in time. He died suddenly while preparing for the play “Today is my birthday”. It was only many years later that the Italian gallery received the name proposed by the artist.

About Cracow exhibition

The last exhibition of Tadeusz Kantor’s works was opened during his lifetime, and took place in Rome in 1990. The works presented at that time found their way into the private collections of Stefania and Dario Piga. The collection was shown at several important exhibitions in Italy, and individual works were also presented to Polish recipients. However, what is more important in the case of this year’s Kraków exhibition is the fact that all these works were presented for the first time in a cross-sectional way in the artist’s country. The exhibition is not a recreation of Rome’s exhibition, it is its new, rearranged version. Taking place simultaneously in two galleries, it allows a more complete understanding of the Roman collection of Tadeusz Kantor’s works.

Tadeusz Kantor’s Gallery-Pracownia at Sienna near the Cracow Market Square, located in the attic of one of Cracow’s tenement houses, presents eighteen drawings and two large-format paintings by the artist. Drawings and watercolors fill the small exhibition space. They are hung in strips, one above the other, covering a tight room in the attic. Monochromatic drawings predominate, sometimes broken by a color accent. The whole is dominated by two paintings, “L’emballage” (1965) and “the Napoleonic Soldier from Goya’s Painting Crossed my Path Again” (1990), which catch the viewer’s eye not only their size, much larger than the other works but also with their saturated colors, which only confirms how skillfully Kantor used the color space and how well-thought-out these works were. Taking a closer look at both of these works allows us to better understand the work model of the author, the creator of large emballages and three-dimensional compositions.

The second, parallel exhibition takes place in a small space of one of the exhibition halls of the Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts located at Matejko Square in Kraków. It makes a much greater visual impression due to the way it is arranged in the intimate interior of one of the exhibition halls with the walls covered with intense purple. Warm light subtly brings out the most important content in the artist’s works. Here, too, Kantor’s works were placed next to each other, using the entire available exhibition space. At the Academy we can contemplate fourteen drawings and collages and, what is very interesting, one object, also present at the exhibition in Italy in 1990. This object is called “Children on Benches” from the play “The Dead Class”, arranged by Kantor’s daughter Dorota Krakowska. as a part of the collections of the Center for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor CRICOTEKA. It complements the entire arrangement and although it is a work well known to everyone, here it fits perfectly with the rest of the works and is something of a nod to the Italian curators and their idea of presenting this work during the last exhibition of Tadeusz Kantor.

The essence of these two parallel exhibitions is, first of all, the way they are arranged in the small space available to both the Studio and the Academy. Both of these rooms allow for almost intimate contact with the art of Tadeusz Kantor. Small drawings and watercolors do not get lost in the clash with large gallery spaces. The visitor can engage in contemplation of works of art that will not be boring, tedious, or overwhelming. Secondly, the Italian collection of Kantor’s works allows us once again to look behind the scenes at the work of an artist of unprecedented versatility, sensitivity, and talent. It brings to mind the multi-stage preparations for performances of the experimental theater founded by Tadeusz Kantor. Thanks to a looped recording in which Kantor can be heard talking about his work, available in both locations, we can experience the real implosion of his artistic expression, which is especially visible here in his speech, gestures and the way he talks about works of art, of which he is the author. The core of both exhibitions is the recreated “spiral”, which was once an important element of the Roman exhibition because it was a symbolic representation of Café Europe. The call that Kantor proposed, especially today, in times of anxiety and ongoing brutal conflicts, becomes doubly powerful and remains valid. However, what is the most important, is the fact that for the first time, a Polish visitor can see this entire collection in one place (let me say so), in Kraków, a city so close to the artist’s heart. Will such an opportunity happen again? At least this particular reason should encourage us to visit the Academy of Fine Arts and Kantor’s Studio.

The curator of the exhibition “Tadeusz Kantor. Café Europa” is Natalia Zarzecka. The exhibition is being presented in two places at the same time – places that are not accidental, because they are close to the artist himself. The first of them is Tadeusz Kantor’s Studio, a branch of Cricoteka, and the second is the Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts. The exhibition accompanies the Open Eyes Art Festival taking place at the same time and will last until February 24, 2024.

The partner of the event is the Italian Cultural Institute in Kraków.

Admission to the exhibition is free.