Venice Welcomes the Polish Avant-Garde: Kantor & Jarema at the 2026 Biennale

kantor-miniatura-2q.jpg, default, Tadeusz Kantor, ‘I Am Holding a Painting on Which I Am Painted as I Am Holding a Painting’, from the series ‘Further On, Nothing’, 1987, courtesy of ©

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If you happen to find yourself in Venice’s famous St Mark’s Square sometime between May and November, you’ll be only a few steps away from an encounter with some of the most prominent artists of the Polish avant-garde.

Formerly the headquarters of the highest officials of the Republic of Venice, over the next six months the historic building of Procuratie Vecchie at the St Mark’s Square will be home to the works of Tadeusz Kantor and Maria Jarema. It is difficult to imagine a more fitting setting for this pair of avant-garde giants.

The exhibition Tadeusz Kantor (1915–1990): Emballage, Cricotage and Madame Jarema, organised by the Starak Family Foundation as the official event accompanying this year’s Venice Biennale and running from 9 May to 22 November, will be focused on Kantor’s paintings. Visitors will have the opportunity to retrace subsequent stages of his career as a painter: from Art Informel, which interested the artist in the late 1950s, through the emballages of the 1960s and 70s to his final series of paintings Further On, Nothing (1987–1990) and I’m Goddamn Falling! (1988–1990), which offers a moving reflection on passing away. Still, it’s difficult to separate Kantor-the-painter from Kantor-the-theatre-artist (he himself would even say: ‘for me, they’re the same’). That’s why the Venice exhibition clearly demonstrates the mutual interpenetration of these two art forms.

An important element of the exhibition is the film Attention! … Painting (directed by Mieczysław Waśkowski), which concerns Kantor’s fascination with Art Informel, at the same time reminding us that the artist has been present at the Venice Biennale before – in various guises. In 1958, Attention! … Painting won an honourable mention at the competition accompanying the Biennale, and two years later Kantor’s achievements were presented in the Polish Pavilion.

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Tadeusz Kantor, ‘Boyhood Epoch’, 1972, acrylic on canvas, photo: courtesy of © Lech Stangret and Dorota Krakowska; Tadeusz Kantor Foundation

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The culmination of this year’s exhibition is a video recording of The Dead Class, widely regarded as one of the most important theatrical achievements of the 20th century. It is accompanied by a display of theatrical objects from the legendary production. However, the mannequins of boys and girls eternally stuck behind school desks aren’t the only props presented at the Venice exhibition. In the section devoted to Maria Jarema, alongside the artist’s iconic monotypes, visitors will also see the costumes she designed for Tadeusz Kantor’s early plays: The Cuttlefish (1956) and Circus (1957). Although the majority of the original costumes haven’t survived until today, Ania Muszyńska, the curator of the exhibition (who also happens to be the curator of the Starak Collection) has decided to reconstruct some of them on the basis of the artist’s surviving drawings and archival photographs. Sewn in the studio of the Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera, they will be exhibited for the first time at the Biennale in a significant act of restoring the memory not only of Jarema’s art but also of her relationship with Kantor – a relationship that became a pillar of post-war avant-garde.

Kantor & Jarema

Kantor didn’t live to see the premiere of his last play Today’s My Birthday – he died after one of the final rehearsals, on 8 December 1990. The performance that he had been working on during his final days was to be a summary of his life’s work and a reckoning with his own art. In it, he invoked the most important figures he encountered on his path, including her – Maria Jarema, the guardian of the avant-garde. Although she had passed away much earlier than he did – as early as in 1958, at the age of only 50 – the influence she exerted on his art is difficult to overstate. The two artists shared a unique intellectual bond, and the friendship that connected them was devoid of any artistic rivalry, built instead on mutual inspiration and admiration.

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Tadeusz Kantor, ‘Man with His Childhood’, 1984, photo: courtesy of © Lech Stangret and Dorota Krakowska; Tadeusz Kantor Foundation

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It was probably in the summer of 1937 that they first met, but they didn’t start their close cooperation until after the war. They would have hours-long discussions, view Polish and foreign exhibitions together and paint side by side. Finally, having organised the 1st Exhibition of Modern Art in 1948, they were both scolded by the Communist Party officials; afterwards, they shared the experience of the exhibition’s closing and the exclusion of them both from the official circulation of art under the new regime. It wasn’t until the political thaw that they could rejoin artistic life. Seven years after that memorable exhibition, hope-driven and yet cut short by the communist regime, Kantor and Jarema were given permission to establish a new theatre. In 1955, Cricot 2 was created, its name a reference to the pre-war avant-garde Cricot theatre, co-created by Jarema.

The thaw of October 1956 also restored to the world Jarema’s work as a painter. Two years before Kantor’s grand exhibition at the Biennale, the Polish Pavilion was devoted to the works of Jarema (among others) – and, while it’s just a coincidence, it’s a meaningful one, demonstrating the greatness of the artists who had once been cast out. Although already seriously ill with leukaemia, she nevertheless came to the exhibition’s opening. She was also there to receive – from the hands of the president of Italy – the award of the Polish-Italian Francesco Nullo Association. She died less than six months later.

The bossy, dominant Kantor would later recall the arguments he and Jarema would have during rehearsals for the first Cricot 2 performance, Witkacy’s The Cuttlefish. He was the director, she the scenographer; in reality, however, she played a larger role than that. The prominent theatre visionary reported that after every such argument, he would yield to her opinion. And her opinion was immensely important to him, as he demonstrated, for instance, in the 1980s, when he said that his old friend still often visited him in his dreams and suggested ideas for his theatre work.

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Maria Jarema, ‘Expressions’, 1956, photo: courtesy of inheritors of Maria Jarema’s estate

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The Cuttlefish brought the new theatre success and popularity. The experimental costumes designed by ‘Jaremianka’ were widely discussed and constituted an element of the performance in and of themselves. Exactly 70 years after the premiere, some of them will be displayed in Venice’s Procuratie Vecchie.

From Winiarski to Kantor

The exhibition of works by Tadeusz Kantor and Maria Jarema is the fifth presentation of Polish art organised in Venice by the Starak Family Foundation and, like the Andrzej Wróblewski exhibition held two years earlier, it has been recognised as an official event accompanying the Venice Biennale. The Foundation’s presence in Venice is a part of their comprehensive strategy to promote Polish art worldwide. Simultaneously, these activities work to reinforce the international circulation of the Starak Collection, one of the most important private collections of post-war Polish art.

The Foundation initiated its presence at the Venice art event with a 2017 exhibition of works by Ryszard Winiarski. It was the first individual exhibition of a Polish artist in the history of the Biennale that held the status of an official accompanying event. Two years later, the Foundation attended the Biennale with a group exhibition titled Force Field, as a part of which thirteen artists presented their works. The exhibition was intended to mark the conclusion of one phase of the project Soon, organised by the Starak Family Foundation to support emerging Polish artists. The initiative continues to this day and is currently in its 87th edition.

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Maria Jarema, ‘Heads’, 1954, courtesy of the inheritors of Maria Jarema’s estate

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In 2022, Ewa Kuryluk’s exhibition I, White Kangaroo was presented at the first post-pandemic Venice Biennale. Two years later, this time inside the Procuratie Vecchie, the Foundation returned with the aforementioned exhibition of works by Andrzej Wróblewski. The Artnewspaper magazine hailed the exhibition as one of the top ten most important events accompanying the Biennale; it also enjoyed great popularity, measured not only by the number of visitors but also the enthusiasm radiating from the guest book entries. The log, displayed by the curator Ania Muszyńska, was filled more than just with words of thanks – it also invited reflective entries concerning the premature death of the artist and the power of his images.

Although we tend to associate the Venice Biennale with a constant influx of new art, three of the five exhibitions presented there by the Starak Family Foundation have focused on artists who are no longer living. However, the achievements of Winiarski, Wróblewski or Kantor and Jarema aren’t presented in historical perspective – quite the contrary, the viewers are struck by their extraordinary, continuing relevance. Probably every European visitor associated Wróblewski’s paintings with the images of the war in Ukraine that had already been going on for 2 years at the time. Similarly, one can very easily apply the contemporary context as a lens through which to view the works by Kantor exhibited this year – works in which he obsessively returns to the subject of memory, scrutinising its mechanisms, assembling it out of scraps, remains, and debris. After all, wars and migrations are accompanied by the disappearance of places as well as the abandonment and destruction of personal items. Once again, memory has become a pressing matter – especially individual memory, for the recognition of which Kantor would make urgent appeals and which he valued over collective history.

The curator Ania Muszyńska explains that the exhibition Tadeusz Kantor (1915–1990): Emballage, Cricotage and Madame Jarema is a response to a call, made by the organisers of this year’s Biennale, for the artists to focus on the quietly personal and the low-key, on individual experience and the subjective. Clearly, it’s a response that hits the nail on the head. Although the competition for the status of the event accompanying Biennale was as fierce as always, once again visitors will get to see not one – the one presented in the Polish Pavilion – but two Polish exhibitions.

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Maria Jarema, ‘Expressions’, 1957, courtesy of the inheritors of Maria Jarema’s estate

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The exhibition Tadeusz Kantor (1915–1990): Emballage, Cricotage and Madame Jarema presents works sourced mostly from the Starak Collection as well as exhibits from the collection of Kraków’s Cricoteka and the Museum of Art in Łódź.

Title: Tadeusz Kantor (1915–1990): Emballage, Cricotage and Madame Jarema

Dates: 9 May – 22 November 2026

Location: Procuratie Vecchie, St Mark’s Square, Venice

Funders: Anna Woźniak-Starak and Jerzy Starak

Organiser: Fundacja Rodziny Staraków

Curator: Ania Muszyńska

Curatorial team: Magdalena Marczak-Cerońska, Kama Kieremkampt

Collaboration: Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor – Cricoteka, Tadeusz Kantor Foundation, Museum of Art in Łódź

Translated from Polish by Anna Potoczny

Language English