Emballage VI. Temporary exhibition.
Open from 5th August 2021.
Cricoteka, 2-4 Nadwiślańska Street, 30-527 Kraków
Thursday – Sunday, from 11:00 am – 7:00 pm.
Tickets: 2 PLN reduced / 4 PLN normal
The human figure on the canvas represents the emballage period in Tadeusz Kantor’s painting and drawing oeuvre, falling in the 1960s. The concept of emballage, which the artist laid out in his Manifesto of Emballage in 1963, derives from the French emballage: packaging. The objects, packages, envelopes, umbrellas and clothes attached to the pictures express the “human need and passion for storing, isolating, hiding and transmitting” in a ritual and symbolic, almost pathetic, gesture revealing “a promise, hope, premonition, temptation, the taste of the unknown and mystery.” In the presented painting, Kantor combines elements of clothing with the outlines of a figure and details of the human body, refined with paint, to bring out their presence and conceal it at the same time.
Tadeusz Kantor sent this and eighteen other emballage works dated 1965–1967 to the 9th São Paulo Art Biennial, held from 22 September 1967 to 8 January 1968. He received award for this work, along with world renowned artists such as Jasper Johns (USA), Baldacini Cesar (France), Flario Carvalho (Brazil), Carlos Cruz-Diez (Venezuela), Fumiaki Fukita (Japan), David Lamelas (Argentina), Michelangelo Pistoletto (Italy) , Josua Reichert (Germany), Ian Schoonhoven (The Netherlands) and Richard Smith (UK).
Emballage VI, private collection – Tadeusz Kantor Museum Depository. Tadeusz Kantor Art Documentation Centre CRICOTEKA in Krakow.
