At the Kantor

This is one of the most interesting exhibition rooms in the Old Town Hall. It is located in the south-eastern corner of the building, next to the tower, and has been designed to exhibit the paintings of matter, Tashism, Structuralism, and works by Tadeusz Kantor, Władysław Hasior, Aleksander Kobzdej, Bronisław Kierzkowski and Tadeusz Brzozowski, among others. The spontaneity of the creative act and the fascination with the structure of matter are evidenced by the achievements of many of them - such as Rajmund Ziemski's Tryptyk I/65 or Brzozowski's Fawory. According to Kantor, a work of art was 'a record, a trace of an action, and the action itself, triggered by the intervention of chance, was not so much a surrender to chance as a mastery of chance, a conscious admission of its role. [...] The essence was the constant variability, the speed of the action, the vehemence of the decision, the possession, the fever, the gibberish, etc.'. Presented in this part of the gallery is Head of Pablo Casals VIII by Adolf Ryszka, a sculptor associated with Toruń, and a lecturer in sculpture at the UMK Academy of Fine Arts from 1983 to 1995. The work belongs to a series of portrait heads of the cello virtuoso, where the figure organically merges with the instrument. Sculptures by other artists: Gustaw Zemla's The Defender, Olgierd Truszyński's The Lying Man, Henryk Siwicki's Michelangelo indicate not only the intensity of experiences encapsulated in stone, terracotta or plaster, but also the search for synthesis in the means of artistic expression.