7 Tadeusz Kantor (1915 - 1990) Informel, 1961 oil/canvas, 81 x 100 cm Signed lower right: 'Kantor& Signed, dated and described on the reverse: 'T. CANTOR VI 1961 HAMBURG 40 FIG.' ID: 102417 Taxes and fees - In addition to the hammer price, the successful bidder agrees to pay us a buyer's premium on the hammer prices of each lot sold. On all lots we charge 20 % of the hammer price. - To this lot we apply 'artist&s owe right' (&#xx27;droit de suite&#xi27;) fee. Royalties are calculated using a sliding scale of percentage of the hammer price. Provenance collection of Mark Mary Spiegel, Rome, 1980 collection of T. Spalvieri, Rome private collection, Italy Dorotheum, Vienna institutional collection, Poland DESA Unicum, 2023 private collection, Poland More information In the second half of the 1950s. Tadeusz Kantor turned to informel, seeking new possibilities of expression beyond the traditional principles of composition and presentation. The impulse for these searches was to stay in Paris in 1955, where he encountered the paintings of Wols, Jean Fautrier, Georges Mathieu and Jackson Pollock. Upon his return, he developed his own form of expressionist abstraction, in which spontaneous gestures and cases co-decided on the shape of the work. In the presented work, dense, irregular painting matter creates a dark form contrasting with a bright background. The accents of red, orange and blue differentiate its surface, and thick twigs give it almost a relief character. The form remains ambiguous, suspended between organic matter and an autonomous painting structure. For Kantor, informel meant leaving the planned composition for painting developing during work, under the influence of gestures and properties of matter. In the early 1960s, however, the artist began to question the possibilities of this formula. In his next work he sought a way to re-enter reality into the image, including by using everyday objects and returning to human form.