Dimensions: 119 x 98 cm
Signed, dated and inscribed l.d.: 'NP 6, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 | T.A. (in a circle) | Ign Witkiewicz 1926/III' (fragment of the signature not preserved, visible on a pre-war photograph of the work)
on the reverse a paper exhibition sticker of National Museum in Warsaw
Origins
Collection of the heirs of the portrayed
Agra-Art auction house, December 2007
private collection, Poland
Polswiss Art auction house, May 2010
private collection, Poland
Exhibited
Witkacy. Seismograph of the Age of Acceleration, National Museum in Warsaw, July 8-October 9, 2022
Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, monographic exhibition, National Museum in Warsaw, December 1989-February 1990
Literature
Anna Żakiewicz, Witkacy. Painting, Olszanica 2012, p. 71 (il.).
Witkacy. Seismograph of the Epoch of Acceleration, exhibition catalog, National Museum in Warsaw, Warsaw 2022, p. 304 (ill.)
Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz 1885 - 1939, catalog of paintings compiled by. Irena Jakimowicz, Anna Żakiewicz, Warsaw 1990, p. 90, cat. no. 620 (ill. on separate board)
Irena Jakimowicz, Witkacy. Painter, Warsaw 1985, p. 73
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. 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.
