The beginnings of my painting

"Servats,"1938, a design for The Death of Tintagiles by Maeterlinck (The Puppet Theatre), in a private collection

“Servats,”1938, a design for The Death of Tintagiles by Maeterlinck (The Puppet Theatre), in a private collection

What I was doing then resembled a fairly middle-of-the-road

painting. But the resemblances  were apparent. More important

was what I “could not” do. For example, I would paint

“People sitting at a table”. Yet I would not have

a tablecloth and fruit on the table for the world. Flowers were out

of question. There was not repast. The tables were empty. Under the growing

layers of substantial paint the figures were getting more and more like cardboard

mounts. Colour turned into ashes. There was no air

but a hard, dry MATTER which

slowly engulfed everything. No “joi de vivre”.

No support from abstract calculations, either.

I thought it argued lack of skill, and I was in anguish.

Now I believe that there was a great deal of “necessity” in it

and that the recalcitrant MATTER expressed something that

defied both purist abstraction and sensualist colour.

I could not give up the representation of the human figure.

Its presence was important and indispensable. No doubt I could see

beyond it a place and a reality I was very much concerned about.

I sensed that a sphere extending beyond the form

and the material surface of the painting was a necessity.

 

Tadeusz Kantor, “Intimate Comments”, 1986-88, typescript in the Cricoteka Archives, p. 2.

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