Sculptures Floating in Space

Janusz Zagrodzki

Abstract

The significance of the oeuvre of Katarzyna Kobro (1898–1951) becomes fully clear when a precise analysis of the structure of her few sculptures, in which a union with space always played the most important role, is taken as the author’s main message. Aiming to express the inner harmony of shapes, Kobro invoked the Pythagorean doctrine, according to which simple numbers and their interrelations are contained in the structure of living organisms, and the most natural proportion is the “golden ratio”. She chose the 5:8 ratio, which became an inviolable principle for the composition of her works. Each sculpture was prepared to interact freely with space. The model of condensation of form proposed by Kobro, contained within the area of a cube or a cuboid all of whose elements were slabs of colour, could be placed in any arrangement: vertically, horizontally or sideways. Kobro’s sculptures resisted the tendency to turn them into stationary architectural compositions; they sought to subjugate open space. The ideal solution for Kobro’s Spatial Compositions to exert a full impact would be a state of weightlessness; this would ultimately create suitable conditions for the creation of an art of aerial “fusion of music and sculpture”, a “completely new – Cosmic Art”.