Katarzyna Kobro, Wladyslaw Strzeminski, une avant-garde polonaise

Wladyslaw Strzeminski was born in Minsk in 1893, Katarzyna Kobro was born in Moscow in 1898; But they developed the greater part of their careers in Poland, first in the avant-guard groups of the 20’s, then in the most progressive art schools, in particular in Lodz. Their last decade was the most terrifying, as they underwent the German invasion, and then, after the war, the hostility of the Polish authorities for being formalist artists, lost in abstraction instead of celebrating socialist realism. They separated, saw their works discarded, and died, respectively of cancer and tuberculosis in less than a year (1951-52). The two artists, two great figures of Polish art of XXth century, deserve this final recognition. The catalogue that accompanies an exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, puts in parallel Strzeminski’s flat work and Kobro’s volumes, very geometric in the beginning and then evolving with the bronze nudes towards a type of figurative - almost classical - form of art.

• Katarzyna Kobro, Wladyslaw Strzeminski, une avant-garde polonaise, Skira/Centre Pompidou, 2018, 200 p., €35