Assemblage, Kantor and his works

To start with, I would like to introduce to you a very interesting form of art. Its name is 'assemblage' and comes from french, meaning a gathering, set. Actually, in arts it means something sort of alike. Assemblage is usually a three or two dimensional picture, consisting of different materials, textures and objects. The technique has its origins in the beginning of the 20th and developed along with such movements like dadaism and other forms of collage. However the form seems simple or even primitive (and in fact it had to face a lot of criticism, because the more conservative individuals considered a bunch of random objects to be far from arts), many artists got really interested in it and even experimented with assemblage. These were for example Picasso, Dubuffet and Duchamp.
The artists that influenced this form of arts the most (or rather were influenced by it) are:

• Arman
• Hans Bellmer 
• Wallace Berman 
• André Breton 
• John Chamberlain 
• Greg Colson 
• Joseph Cornell 
• Rosalie Gascoigne 
• Raoul Hausmann 
• Romauald Hazoumé 
• Robert H. Hudson 
• Edward Kienholz 
• Jean-Jacques Lebel 
• Ondrej Mares 
• Louise Nevelson 
• Minoru Ohira 
• Meret Oppenheim 
• Robert Rauschenberg
• Fred H. Roster 
• Daniel Spoerri
• Pansy Stockton
• Vladimir Tatlin
• Wolf Vostell
• Jeff Wassmann
• H. C. Westermann 

Ossario's 'Forearmed'

And now, moving on to a more specific area...

Ever heard of Tadeusz Kantor? In the context of assemblage, you definitely should! It was a polish painter, director and scenographer from the southern region of the country. He is well known for his works of art and also being a professor in the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow and the founder of an Independent Theatre under the nazi occupation, during the II World War. 

The one on the left is an example of an assemblage made by him in 1968. Its polish title is 'ambalaże, przedmioty, postacie' and it presents a set of (at the first glance) random elements. There is a woman in the right bottom corner, a box at the very bottom, a fragment of a face and a red umbrella, followed by a yellow square. The whole picture remains pale when it comes to colours, however a small piece of the background is blue. Still, when you look a bit closer it starts to seem more legitimate. Maybe the umbrella is useless, since the shy is blue?

sorces: wikipedia.org

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