Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz "Multiple self-portrait in mirrors", 1915-1917.
Little Witkacy with his father, about 1893.
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novelist painter philosopher Photographer playwright writer
Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz was born on February 24, 1885 in Warsaw, Poland.
He was a son of the painter, architect and an art critic Stanisław Witkiewicz. His mother was Maria Pietrzkiewicz Witkiewiczowa. Both of his parents were born in the Samogitian region of Lithuania. His godmother was the internationally famous actress Helena Modrzejewska. Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz was reared at the family home in Zakopane.
In accordance with his father's antipathy to the "servitude of the school," Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz was home-schooled and encouraged to develop his talents across a range of creative fields.
But later he studied at the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts.
Witkiewicz was invited by Malinowski to act as draftsman and photographer on a 1914 expedition to Oceania, a venture that was interrupted by the onset of World War I. A happen-stance citizen of the Russian Empire, Witkiewicz went to St Petersburg and was commissioned as an officer in the Imperial army. Witkiewicz witnessed the Russian Revolution while stationing in St Petersburg.
He had begun to support himself through portrait painting and continued to do so on his return to Zakopane in Poland. He soon entered into a major creative phase, setting out his principles in "New Forms in Painting and Introduction to the Theory of Pure Form in the Theatre".
Of about forty plays written by Witkiewicz between 1918 and 1925, twenty-one survive, and only "Jan Maciej Karol Hellcat" met with any public success during the author's lifetime.
Around the year 1925 Witkacy quit painting with oils on canvas, and founded the S.I. Witkiewicz Portrait Firm, which became his main source of income.
In the late 1920s he turned to the novel, writing two works, "Farewell to Autumn" and "Insatiability".
During the 1930s, Witkiewicz published a text on his experiences of narcotics, including peyote, and pursued his interests in philosophy. He also promoted emerging writers such as Bruno Schulz.
Shortly after Poland was invaded by Germany in September 1939, Witkiewicz escaped to the rural frontier town of Jeziory, Poland. After hearing the news of the Soviet invasion of Poland on September 17, 1939, Witkiewicz committed suicide on September 18, 1939 by taking a drug overdose and trying to slit his wrists.
Portrait of Zofia Romer
Nova Aurigae
False Woman. Portrait of Mrs. Maryla Grosmanowa with Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz
return from fishing
Two Heads
Portrait of Mieczysław Gajewicz
Composition
Male Portrait
Fantastic Composition
Self Portrait
Male Portrait
Sunset on the Sea
Self Portrait
Jadwiga Janczewska
Quotations:
"The customer must always be satisfied."
"In recent times, I was given a lot to think about by the view (I cannot put it otherwise, as, unfortunately I looked at it as if from a balcony, unable to accept any input due to schizoid inhibitions) of the Russian Revolution, from February 1917 till January 1918. I observed this astonishing happening from very close up, being an officer of the regiment that started it."
"Death is the only thing I desire, in order not to suffer and not to feel the terrible weight of life and dragging myself on after dying alive. I wish to have a portion of potassium cyanide in order to be a master of my own life at each instant."
Witkiewicz associated with a group of "formist" artists in the early 1920s. Moreover, he became the main ideologist of the Formists.
Witkiewicz took drugs, including peyote.
Physical Characteristics: One of the actresses of his play "Persy Zwierżątkowskaja" remembered Witkiewicz in the following way: "He was beautiful. Tall, well-built, with dark hair and a dark, seemingly brooding face, which got suddenly lit up with very light blue eyes. He had a poignant gaze, a steel one."
Quotes from others about the person
Czesław Miłosz: "It should suffice for us, that a man of his format appeared in Poland, a man who, in spite of his oddities and artistic failures nonetheless stood immesurably higher that most of his contemporaries. The quarrels and polemics of inter-war Poland seem quite petty when juxtaposed with what Witkiewicz sought after."
Jan Kott: "Witkiewicz was a catastrophist, gifted like Orwell - both the Orwell of Animal Farm and the Orwell of 1984 - with stunning clarity and acute vision. He had said that civilisations of the equal, satiated and automatised will be threatened not only by the pressure of ‘annihilators’ from the East, Asia and Africa, but also by the fact that mechanicised civilisations are frail and prone to insanity, and helpless in the face of madmen and psychopaths. In a world that has become a global village, madness is contagious and common. In this great village, where everything happens at once, everything has suddenly become possible."
Witkiewicz was engaged with Jadwiga Janczewska, whom he had met in Zakopane, but on the 21st of February, 1914, pregnant Jadwiga commited suicide.
On the 23rd of April, 1923, Witkacy married Jadwiga nee Unrug, the granddaughter of Juliusz Kossak. The couple’s life in Zakopane, where they stayed in a pension-house ran by Witkacy’s mother, was filled with conflicts, resulting in Jadwiga moving to Warsaw. The failed marriage gradually turned into a real friendship, they often visited each other, and Witkacy’s preserved collection of letters to his wife counts some 1300 items.
In 1929 Witkacy's lover was Czesława Oknińska-Korzeniowska.
Witkiewicz was close friends with Karol Szymanowski.
Witkiewicz was close friends from childhood with Bronisław Malinowski.
Witkiewicz was close friends from childhood with Zofia Romer.
