Dimensions: 64 x 45.5 cm (in light of passe-partout)
signed, described and dated on the underside: 'ś.n.W. | B.N.W. | NP71 1931 V | Witkacy (T.B + E + d)'.
on the reverse a sticker with handwriting: 'Zwolińska' and a sticker from an exhibition at the National Museum in Warsaw with catalog number 1048 and stamps: 'FIRST IN WARSAW | EXHIBITION OF PORTRETS | Fir St. I. WITKIEWICZ | ORGANIZED BY THE CAPITAL HOUSE OF CULTURE | ELEKTORALNA 12 | WARSAW - APRIL - MAY 1958', 'EXHIBITED AT AN EXHIBITION | IN NEW FAIR - AUGUST 1957', 'EXHIBITED AT AN EXHIBITION | IN OPOL| NOVEMBER | DECEMBER | 1957', 'EXHIBITED AT AN EXHIBITION | IN WROCLAW SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 1957.'
Provenance
collection of Modesta Zwolinska, Zakopane
private collection, Warsaw
Exhibited
Painting works of Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, District House of Culture in Nowy Targ, Nowy Targ 1957.
Painting works of Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, September-October, Wrocław 1957
100 portraits of the "Company of S.I. Witkiewicz," Stołeczny Dom Kultury, Warsaw, April-May 1958
Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz 1885-1939, National Museum in Warsaw, December 1989 - February 1990
Literature
Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz 1885-1939. catalog of paintings, edited by Irena Jakimowicz with the cooperation of Anna Żakiewicz, National Museum in Warsaw, Warsaw 1990, p. 120, cat. no. 1456
Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, SBWA, Zakopane 1959, item 141.
Catalog of an exhibition of paintings by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, District House of Culture, Nowy Targ 1957, item 270.
Biography
His father was a 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. In time, as a result of theoretical reflections on 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.
