Polish
I was born In 1922 in Rzeszów. In years of gymnasium I was typical of great fantasy, but I was quite an usual pupil. I was fascinated with sport and I liked to draw. In 1938 I achieved first place in Poland in jumps on a trampoline and second prize at swimming at national high school competition. These were my youth successes.
Second world war collapsed our family home, broke current ideas of happiness and life. I became a soldier too fast – being 17-year-old boy I must have been responsible for my own. I exchanged sport for conspiracy in the Army Combat Union, my love for drawing transform into sabotage actions. I was wanted by Gestapo and arrested while escaping to Hungary, when my friend and I stood in front of new world, which title was “Arbeit macht frei’.
Everything there is metaphysical – violence, cruelty, heroism and sacrifice. Races, classes, political convictions, religious selection. We are an archipelago of human-unhuman psycho, when a man became just a number. A Camp is a chance for suicide. My friend and I were sentenced to death sentence for escaping. After that incident remains only bunker on death block – place without exits, windows, air and hope. This is a world not wider than 90x90 cm, not higher than a man. In steh – prison cell is overwhelmed with darkness. Days and nights don’t exist. Time seems to stop. Waiting for executing a sentence leads to final matters, to God. I am close to surrender, I want to die. But Fortune wishes something different. The only amnesty on 1943, caused by changing commandant (Stoess – Liebenschal), sentences me once again for life in camp and life imprisonment in penalty company. However, it looks like my destination was to be once again in the death block. I left. Providence? After years I write in the ‘Cervantez’, play realized in 1976 in Teatr Studio: „I am cut off from noose – death is inside of me, and I must sleep with her’. Eschatology? Past and refrence. Rememberance is a human matter. Can it be individual – society without commitments? Going by in the time, destruction are not only a camp landscape, but a threat in general. I don’t divide time into ‘today’ and ‘tomorrow’. I refer to the past just like to an experience. I remember state of hunger as a transformation of personality, just like nirvana. Its resignation and feelings, without pain and fear.
Years of war and occupation became my great university, sometimes it was an attempt of character and friendships. First days of freedom are just like vacuum without happiness – but obviously this is a time of rising up from knees. Feeling of being needless, full of complexes. Starting to search a chance in the science. I am ashamed of my ‘hump’ and I don’t admitt to my experiences. I’m starting studies on ASP in Cracow in 1947. The world of fantasy, fascination of beyond-realism in painting and scenography opens in front of me. I want not much, but I have a lot. „I take off a crust of time, because I’m alive” – I say with Dante’s words in 1974. I am taken ill, while taking a run-up. Regardless of this I don’t stop studying. I read a lot: Nietzche, Tatarkiewicz, Balzak, Witkacy, Mann. I bury myself in art theory of Klee. Privileges of youth steer clear of me – I’m becoming 30. In 1952 and 1953 I receive a diploma with award. It encourages me. I establish my own home and start working indepndently in theatre. I don’t waste my time for socialism. I begin with a thaw in 1956 and introduce an abstraction on a stage. In first socialistic city in country, Nowa Huta, comes out first ridiculic formalist. Szajnism and schamtteism – these are the same – says criticism of „Trybuny Ludu”. That makes me feel strong. I exchang teatre design into spatial composition, surroundung of an actor – into peculiar environment. Suspended forms, structures, their movemnt, ripped-through horizons, full of misterious holes, and curtains surround whole hall. Names of power Broszkiewicz, ‘Oresteia’ of Aischylos, ‘Mice and people’ of Steinbeck, ‘Antygone’ of Sophocles express in structuralism of forms, art of formel. I receive a prestigous Prize of Criticism of Cultural Review – nezt to s. Mrożek and z. Mycielski – for cocreation of innovative shape in the Teatr Ludowy in Nowa Huta. Almost all projects are made at a scale of 1:1. After returns from scholarships in Paris (1957 and 1958) my artistic survey doesn’t become radicalized by abstract art of Malewicz, Kadinsky, Braque, Picasso. I avoid contructivism, including Craig’s and Meyrhold’s theories, I familiarize with dadaism and Bauhaus. In 1961 I made „A ladder to heaven”, which punctures a horizon in ‘Dziady’ of Mickiewicz (director K. Skuszanka and J. Krasowski). Frozen in movement spatial forms and similar to tableaux objects paintings of Dramas cycle are made like an assembly of various materials: teared canvases, burnt backgrounds. On cardboards comes into being theatre variations, similar to collage, half surreal. Are these my nightmares? Characters – figures and ‘plen-air of imagination’ for not written plays? Enchanted author’s teatre? A scene from ‘A madman and a nun’ of Witkacy (1959)was full of magical, overrealistic subjects. Swinged, unbridled, apocaliptic horses add simultaneously a part from ‘Joy of recovered dustbin’ (Kaden-Bandrowski – adapt. and dir. J. Krasowski) in 1960. Other sort of expression is obtained with shiny, bended metal sheets, which fall in the end of ‘Nie-Boska Komedia’ of Krasiński (dir. B. Korzeniewski) in 1959.
I bring in on the ground of play and halls old, rusty wheelbarrows, broken bathtubs, pipes, teared sackes instead of costumes, wood boots, just like in ‘Acropolis’ on 1962 (corealisation with Grotowski). Next in years1963-66 in Teatr Ludowy in Nowa Huta appear author’s performance: ‘Rewizor’ by Gogol with old ‘sitzbat’s’ on wheels, suspended old pallets as flats of provincial dignitaries, ‘An empty field’ by Hołuj with bandaged cow-feeder and utopian ‘Castle’ (by Kafka), which collapses in the end, ‘Death on a peartree’ by Wandurski with battle scene, expressed with dispersing of metal cycles in a rush of selfdestruction in crosses lights. Majority of these plays were introduced as politic provocation and a humbug. That’s why I had to resign from leading the theatre in 1966. But I did’t give in. Not until year 1969 play of H.Kajzar in Stary Teatr in Cracow was abolished. Then I left the city. In painitng from 1966-68 (cycle of ‘Epitafia i apoteozy’’s paintings) I exchange rest of objects into its primordial and use it as a building material. This material is transformed into objects with different form and meaning. ‘Deballage’, performance realized in Nicei in 1967 with ‘Vagants’ actors is a metaphorical show of disintegration of construction and form. It became` an important example of my creation in 1969. In commemoration of murdered people by Germans I build a spatial composition (140 m2). It is called ‘Reminiscencje’ and is presented during a jubilee of 150 years of ASP in Cracow in 1969. Then is Biennial of Art in Venice in 1970. ‘Reminiscencje’ is not only about rememberance, but also a warning against extermination, possible even now.
