Clara Meister, Katarzyna Kobro’s tobacco stand and nursery school 45
Pétunia iii
Together with architect friends they formed the group PRAESENS, which explored architectural issues in the form of a journal and various exhibitions. One exhibition was co‑organized with the De Stijl Group, in which Kobro’s work was highly discussed and well received. Her sculpture Spatial Structure 3 shows her interest in architecture and can be seen above all as an architectural design. The growing disagreement between the architects, who followed mostly their technical interest and their orientation towards functionalism, and the artists, who cardinally pursued the concept of sculptural aspects of architecture, most probably lead to the breakup of the group. Still Kobro’s artistic thoughts continued to be driven by the organization of space and led to an “architectonization of sculpture.”3 In her search for new forms and a flexible principle of proportionality of 3. Ibid. dimension for a harmonic relation of forms, she turned to the laws of nature and mathematical approaches such as the Pythagorean doctrine and the Golden Section. Kobro not only formulated her own theories about this approach and brought it to form in her objects, but also tried to apply her thoughts in two more practical attempts at architectural design, which were both for public spaces. With Strzemi�ski, she collaborated in 1928 on an architectural draft for an open competition announced by the Warsaw authorities to re-organize the city’s architecture. Kobro pushed the idea of sculptures serving as a basic understanding of architectural and urban spaces. She wanted to understand the city as a functional organism through the prism of contemporary art, science and technology. In one essay she endorses that “the essential basis of sculpture is space and the manipulation of this space, the organization of the rhythm of proportions, the harmony of form, bound with space. Sculpture should reflect the organizational and technical possibilities of its time. Our cities suffocate because of the lack of organization and urban planning. Our sculptures stand in city squares like stone markers of guilt serving to commemorate and decorate this chaos.”4 Both chain-smokers, Kobro and Strzemi�ski designed a movable kiosk for the sale of tobacco, 4. K. Kobro, “For people unable to think…,” FORMA, which consisted of a light framework of no. 3, 1935. walls easy to install and remove, which protected the customer and salesman from weather conditions. The inside was equipped with a couple of shelves to store and display the merchandise. The only remaining photograph of the sketch is in black and white but shows clear contrasts, which leads to the conclusion that the planar walls were painted according to Kobro’s color theory. Whereas Kobro’s Unistic Sculpture Theory demanded monochrome white to avoid the perception of a sculpture as a complete body in space and therefore separate and independent from its surrounding space, she claims however that the composition of space requires colors. The colors for spatial composition have to have great energy and intensity, such as red, blue and yellow and also black and white. Color nuances, which only differ slightly from each other, were considered useless and passive. Her color theory, as well as her use of straight lines and correct angles, follows aspects of Mondrian’s use of primary colors and non-colors. Two opposite elevations displayed the offered wares of “Cigarettes” and “Tobacco.” The flexible and purposefull design was stood out from all other proposals with its simple construction, but apparently it was never manufactured. The second, and this time solo, architectural attempt by Kobro was the Project for a Functional Nursery School in 1932-1934. From this project only two photographs of the model remain, both of which are from two different angles allowing for a closer analysis of the model.