A visionary. A total artist. A revolutionary of the theatre. The most international of Polish artists and the most Polish of international artists. One of the most prominent figures in 20th-century art, Tadeusz Kantor (1915—1990) was a revolutionary in every sense of the term. The Cricot 2 Theatre he founded kept transgressing the traditional boundaries of stage. Drawing from the Cricoteka collection, the exhibition hosted by the Brukenthal Museum in Sibiu puts on display Tadeusz Kantor’s theatrical objects, costumes, props and sculptures, to build a picture of an exceptional figure. Containing traces of past performances, the exhibits also convey the idea behind the creative process and constitute a record of it.
“These works did not arise from an immediate and passing need of a particular production. They are intimately linked with the ideas that define my work. […] Their inner tension and self-containedness are sufficient for them to be autonomous works of art.” - Tadeusz Kantor
The exhibition takes as its point of departure the idea of costumes as autonomous works of art with adequate tension, a biography and materiality of their own, while being at the same time an extension of space and the actor’s body. The weight of materiality in Kantor’s work is singular. The objects on stage are not just “rests” or “shreds,” as he often said, they also tell a story about the human condition, transience and presence. Theatrical objects and costumes have become sculptural forms, balancing on the border between body and space, idea and physicality, collective memory and individuality. Costumes, those losing their human form and those imitating it, transform into full-fledged works. These are peculiar body-sculptures which deserve to be seen as sculptures, at the same time being inextricably tied to the actor’s corporeality. Comprising intense images, metaphorical objects and living bodies, the stage matter has transformed into an area in which to experiment, and to contemplate transience, memory and death.
The objects to be seen at the exhibition illustrate the artist’s exceptional ability to create his own theatrical language: inimitable, deeply rooted in Polish history and the experience of the 20th century. They also show Kantor’s sensitivity to global artistic trends – Dadaism, Art Informel and Constructivism. A direct reference to Romanian culture is made by Kantor in his revision of materiality as he designed four costumes for a production of Rhinoceros (1961), based on Eugène Ionesco’s play, directed by Piotr Pawłowski for the Stary Theatre in Kraków. These multicoloured, visually rich costumes are accompanied by more personal projects – from those inspired by Witkacy, to costumes made of paper for the cricotage Where Are the Snows of Yesteryear, to installations from Kantor’s last productions in the Theatre of Death period: The Dead Class and Today is My Birthday. Included in the presentation are also objects that break away from the traditional idea of costume – an authorial reconstruction of Goplana from Balladyna or Underaged on a frame.
Intended to stimulate an interest in the history of Tadeusz Kantor’s theatre, the exhibition also retraces the ideas, influences and fascinations behind it. It provides an arena in which to reflect on his approach to building tension, to matter and form, and on his theatre metamorphosing into something that has come to exist beyond time – as a collection of art objects that keeps pulsating and reverberates to this day. It is there – between active imagination and the body – that Kantor’s theatre is born: a visionary synthesis of form, emotion and space. A theatre that does not end once the stage is empty, but goes on – within matter, memory, the imagination of future generations.
The placement of the Polish artist in the Brukenthal Museum is noteworthy. On their way to the Costume / Sculpture / Body show, viewers walk past masterpieces created by van Eyck, Veronese, Cranach, Rubens, Lotto, da Messina, Brueghel the Younger and Memling. This route positions the Polish painter and director side by side with the masters of painting and enables him to enter into dialogue with them. However, Kantor’s theatrical objects are completely separate from those earlier works, offering a sensual theatrical experience that takes the form of a vast spatial installation displaying the collection.
Finally, the temporal context of the opening of the Sibiu show is not accidental. Between 20 and 29 June 2025, one of Europe’s largest theatrical events, the International Theatre Festival (FITS), is taking place in this Saxon town. The ten-day-long feast featuring the most valuable theatrical productions and artistic events, concerts, screenings, performances from the four corners of the world, brings to mind the voyages of the Cricot 2 troupe not only to similar festivals, but generally through all sorts of melting pots of languages and cultures, dozens of places around the globe that hosted Tadeusz Kantor’s productions. Of all those international stages, the Romanian was the only one Kantor’s actors did not enter during his lifetime. Revisiting Sibiu after sixteen years (in 2009, the scenography for I Shall Never Return was put on show here), the exhibition will this time be accompanied by contextual input, including a projection of unique archival materials and a polyphony of voices coming from Polish and Romanian theatre scholars, including Katarzyna Fazan, Anna Róża Burzyńska, Tomasz Pietrucha, Marta Bryś, Natalia Zarzecka and Octavian Saiu.
Curators: Justyna Droń, Bogdan Renczyński
Curator of the accompanying programme: Aldona Mikulska
Co-financed from: the funds of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland. Romania
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