A.r.
a.r. (artyści rewolucyjni; awangarda rzeczywista). Polish group of avant-garde artists that flourished between 1929 and 1936. Its members were the sculptor Katarzyna Kobro, the painters Wladyslaw Strzeminski and Henryk Stazewski, and the poets J. Brzekowski and J. Przybos. It was founded by Strzeminski after he, Kobro and Stazewski left the Praesens group. The group’s programme chiefly reflected the views of Strzeminski. In two leaflets entitled Kommunikaty a.r. (‘a.r. bulletins’) the group declared itself in favour of a ‘laboratory’ version of Constructivism and an avant-garde art that influenced social life in an indirect and gradual manner. It opposed the politicization and popularization of art, which it regarded as a debasement of artistic expression, but the group also believed that rigorous, formal discipline, the organic construction of a work, its coherence, effectiveness and economy of means, made art somewhat synthetic or contrived. From 1933 the group’s announcements regarding its programme appeared in the Lódz art magazine Forma.
