Tadeusz Kantor

George Hyde (University of East Anglia)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.8.3: Polish Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Roman Koropeckyj (University of California, Los Angeles), Ewa M. Thompson (Rice University)

Dates

Born 6 Apr 1915
Died 8 Dec 1990
Activity 1942-1990

Places

Born in Poland
Active in Poland

Cultural Identities

Jewish European

Activities

Primary

Designer
Painter
Theatre Director

Resources

Kantor's Works

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Kantor first saw the light of day in the little town of Wielopole Skrzyńskie in 1915 (it may be no accident that “skrzyńka” is Polish for a box or crate, thus anticipating the packaging motif that figures extensively in his work, the idea that people get “packaged” in various ways). In the 1930s he studied art, whence the powerful influence of the Polish painterly avant-garde, and sometimes even his admirers forget he was an important painter as well. Theatrical experiments began with Maeterlinck’s

TheDeathofTintagiles

(1937), but the production owed less to Edward Gordon Craig, whose symbolist theatre Kantor continued to admire, than to Meyerhold and constructivism, or the Bauhaus. Interestingly, his lecture

On Dreams

(1949) cites Mayakovsky’s

How are Verses Made

(1926),…

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3453 words

Citation: Hyde, George. "Tadeusz Kantor". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 06 May 2015 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12542, accessed 24 November 2024.]