[POLISH NEO-AVANT-GARDE – CONCEPTUALISM – HAPPENING] List. Trzeci happening-cricotage... [Letter. The third happening of Cricotage...].
Warsaw: Galeria Foksal PSP, 1967. Folio (40 × 29.5 cm). Six leaves of newsprint to rectos only, folded once, held together with a staple to upper left corner. Photo-illustrations. Text lightly toned due to stock, small chips along edges. Still about very good. Item #54229
Rare large-format publication of Galeria Foksal, part of the program of the third happening of Teatr Cricot founded by Tadeusz Kantor (1915–1990). A painter, set designer, theatre director, conceptual artist and theoretician, who had an enormous influence on the development of Polish art of the second half of the twentieth century, Kantor has been called the Andy Warhol of Polish art. As a student in Kraków during the German occupation in WWII, Kantor created a small underground theatre group that performed in private apartments. In 1955 Kantor was one of the key figures in the revival of the Kraków avant-garde group, organizing the experimental Cricot 2 Theatre in the same year. Throughout the 1960s his work moved in the direction of performance art, as he organized performances in unusual locations, used inanimate objects as actors, while using live actors as props. To document the shifts in his thinking about theatre he produced a number of manifestos including The Zero Theatre (1963), Theatre Happening (1967) and The Impossible Theatre (1973). This 1967 event would become one of Kantor’s most famous happenings, with the participation of major contemporary artists such as Maria Stangret, Zbigniew Gostomski, Mariusz Tchorek, Hanna Ptaszkowska, Edward Krasiński, Wiesław Borowski. This is one of the earliest events of Foksal Gallery in Warsaw (est. 1966), one of a handful of galleries that succeeded in showing work with avant-garde and conceptualist leanings throughout the Communist era.
As of April 2024, KVK, OCLC show one copy outside of Poland, at the British Library.
Price: €600.00