Katarzyna Kobro

Katarzyna Kobro (26 January 1898 – 21 February 1951)

Born in Moscow to a family of mixed German and Russian heritage, Kobro immigrated to Poland in the 1920s where she produced most of her work. Together with her husband, Władysław Strzemiński, she worked on the concept of Spatiality by incorporating spatial composition as well as prefabricated elements and industrial or man-made products into sculpture.

Early life

Katarzyna Kobro was born on 26 January 1898 in Moscow, in what was then the Russian Empire, to a multicultural family. Her father, Nikolai Alexander Michael von Kobro, came from a family of Baltic Germans from present-day Latvia, and her mother, Evgenia Rozanov, was Russian. She was a member of the Moscow Union of Artists with Kazimir Malevich, Olga Rozanova, Lyubov Popova, Vladimir Tatlin, and Alexander Rodchenko, among others. In 1920, Kobro married Polish artist Władysław Strzemiński (1893–1952).

Style Strzemiński's Sala Neoplastyczna (Neoplastic Room) at the Museum of Art in Łódź featuring sculptures by Kobro.

Kobro was one of the most progressive interwar avant-garde artists. Under the influence of Constructivism, she rejected the concepts of Aestheticism, individualism and subjectivism, and instead postulated the absolute objectivism of form. Her works have been exhibited in museums around the world including Centre Pompidou, Museo Reina Sofia, Museum of Modern Art, Moderna Museet Malmö, and Whitechapel Gallery.

On 12 December 2012, the International Astronomical Union named a crater located in the southern hemisphere of Mercury in honor of Kobro.

Kobro's work was included in the 2021 exhibition Women in Abstraction at the Centre Pompidou.

On 26 January 2022, Google featured a Doodle to commemorate her 124th birthday.