Size: 55 x 43 cm (in light of passe-partout)
Signed and inscribed l.d.: 'Ignacy Witkiewicz | 1925 II NP | Nπ (T.B.)', p.m.: 'T.B. 29 Nπ [...] 22 27 Cof III'.
Exhibited
Witkacy (un)known, Common Arts Foundation, Warsaw, February 21-March 15, 2025.
August Zamoyski. Thinking in Stone, Center for Contemporary Art Signs of the Times, Torun, June 21-September 1, 2024
Literature
New Generation and Classics of Modernity from the Collection of Wojciech Fibak, exhibition catalog, Center for Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu, ed. Krzysztof Stanisławski, Anna Kompanowska, Toruń 2024, p. 297 (il.).
On the Track of Perfection. Selected works from the collection of Wojciech Fibak, exhibition catalog, State Art Gallery in Sopot, Sopot 2022, p.47 (il.)
Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz 1885-1939. catalog of paintings, edited by Irena Jakimowicz with cooperation of Anna Żakiewicz, National Museum in Warsaw, Warsaw 1990, p.84, cat. no. 564
Biography
His father was the well-known critic, painter and writer, creator of the so-called "Zakopane style" in architecture Stanislaw Witkiewicz. In 1905-10 he studied unsystematically at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow with Jozef Mehoffer and with Wladyslaw Slewinski in Poronin. He traveled to Italy, France and Germany. In 1914 he participated in Bronislaw Malinowski's ethnographic expedition to Australia, from where he returned to Europe on hearing of the outbreak of World War I. His early painting work was under the sign of Young Poland and the influence of P. Gauguin and Wl. Slewinski. Later he came to a kind of expressionism. Over time, as a result of theoretical reflections on the form, he gave up painting. He founded a one-man "Portrait Company" and limited himself to making pastel portraits for a living, often created under the influence of stimulants that allowed him to experiment with form. Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz wrote 4 novels, more than 40 dramas, numerous articles and essays on painting, literature, theater and philosophy. During the interwar period, he lived mainly in Zakopane. After the outbreak of World War II, he fled from the Germans to the eastern borderlands, where he committed suicide in the village of Jeziory in Polesia on September 18, 1939.
