Katarzyna Kobro: Google Doodle celebrates Polish avant-garde sculptor’s 124th birthday

Google Doodle celebrates the 124th birthday of a Russian-born, Polish avant-garde sculptor Katarzyna Kobro, on January 26, 2022.

Who was Katarzyna Kobro?

Katarzyna Kobro was born on January 26, 1898, in Moscow, Russia, however at the time her family lived in the area presently known as Latvia. In her teenage years, Kobro and her family moved to Moscow, where she studied art from the lofty Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture.

Katarzyna Kobro’s utilitarian and geometric sculptures investigated the relationship between expression and the endlessness of space, cutting out Kobro’s place as a leading innovator of mid-twentieth-century Central European abstract art.

Katarzyna Kobro married Władysław Strzemiński – a respected avant-garde artist in his own right – in 1920. Around that same time, Kobro made her first sculpture, “TOS 75 – struktura,” from a hodgepodge of materials like cork and metal. She and her husband moved to his home country of Poland two years after the fact, where she would experience the rest of her life.

Beginning in 1925, Katarzyna Kobro transformed the modern art world through the formation of a series of “Kompozycja Przestrzenna” – or “Spatial Compositions.” Where generally a sculpture is viewed as a single, shaped object, Kobro’s works in this series stressed the open spaces.

Following an early interest in arts and sciences, Katarzyna Kobro enrolled in the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in 1917 where she teamed up with moderate groups re-envisioning Russian art. Her complex improvement was supplemented by arising perspectives in the Polish avant-garde, in which artists believed art could be consolidated into everyday life through mass production.

The style is the result of a time that looked to mix art into everyday life through architecture and science. This desire was best expressed with The Dimensionist Manifesto in 1936 – of which Kobro was a cosigner – which looked to make a hazardous extension of art “towards completely new realms” similarly that science was all the while experiencing.

Katarzyna Kobro was one of the most recognized female sculptors of the inter-war period; albeit few of her artworks survived, they all have significant artistic merit.

On this creative foundation, Katarzyna Kobro made her first sculpture in 1920-a a combination of metal, wood, glass, and cork named “Tos 75 – Struktura” (Tos 75 – Structure).

She moved to Poland soon after, where she made her most renowned works-the 1925-1933 sculpture series “Kompozycja Przestrzenna” (Spatial Compositions) and the 1931 philosophy book, “Composition of Space: Calculations of Space-Time Rhythm,” co-written with her husband, Władysław Strzemiński.

Kobro further announced her conceptual philosophy in signing the 1936 Parisian “Manifeste Dimensioniste” (“Dimensionist Manifesto”), which required the integration of scientific progressions into art.

Katarzyna Kobro died in Poland in 1951, at 53 years old. Today, you can see some of Kobro’s surviving or restored works in a collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The pieces are courtesy of Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, which Kobro, Strzemiński, and different artists of the time – all on the whole known as the “a.r.” group – initially served to establish with their personal art collections.

Every year, Muzeum Sztuki likewise awards an especially moderate artist with the Katarzyna Kobro Prize to pay tribute to the late artist.

Google Doodle on Katarzyna Kobro’s 124th Birthday

The present Google Doodle apes the designs of some of Katarzyna Kobro’s artworks, with slight adjustments to appropriately form the letters of “Google.”

For example, the initial letter “G” is clearly inspired by “Rzeźba Abstrakcyjna (2)” – or “Abstract Sculpture (2).” Meanwhile, the first letter “o” and the second “g” are inspired by two pieces in Kobro’s series of Spatial Compositions.

During the 20th century, art historians started reestablishing Katarzyna Kobro’s works, which reignited interest in her effect on the social and artistic movements of her time. Quite a bit of Kobro’s remaining artworks is at present on display in the Museum of Modern Art in New York’s 2021 exhibition “Collection 1940s-1970s.”

Katarzyna Kobro’s works have been displayed in various museums around the world including Centre Pompidou, Museo Reina Sofia, Museum of Modern Art, Moderna Museet Malmö, and Whitechapel Gallery.