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Remember that you can manage the cookies yourself by changing the settings on your browser. In , the second Krakow Group was formed, an association of independent artists, each with a different way of thinking but all equally committed to art.
They were individualists, but what united them was their interest in contemporary art. In this approach, the second Krakow Group was a few years ahead of Fluxus. It became the Polish avant-garde of postmodernism. Despite its name, artists from cities other than Krakow could also become members.
In , the Group applied to the city hall to be allocated premises for a gallery. Krakow had always been brave in such matters. The artists were offered a space to practise their art and — incidentally, and unintentionally — a place to exercise artistic independence. The Krakow Group took advantage of both opportunities. The Krzysztofory Gallery was the first exhibition space offered to artists in the history of Poland.
Every member of the Group was entitled to exhibit at Krzysztofory, on the basis of its democratic founding. However, at some point a dictatorship emerged. The Krzysztofory rules succumbed to the personality of Tadeusz Kantor, whose talent and ego were indomitable and non-negotiable. He was a predator, naturally expansive, who changed his intellectual guises with ease. He painted expressive paintings, devised witty happenings, created theatre imbued with pathos and wrote insightful and prophetic manifestos.
