Pastel on dark gray paper, dimensions in st: 65.5 x 48 cm.
Signed at bottom right: "Witkacy 25 | VIII | TD [in circle] | Witkacy 1918".
The work has an appraisal by Dr. Anna Żakiewicz dated April 2023.
Pastel preserved in good condition. It has traces of old paper folding and a small paper loss in the l. g. corner (not visible in the frame).
The work has not undergone conservation treatment, only the glass was replaced with TrueVue 70% museum glass.
The painting has a frame made in the framing workshop of the National Museum in Warsaw, prepared especially for the artist's monographic exhibition in 1989. A paper tag from the exhibition at the National Museum in Warsaw with the item number is preserved on the reverse.
Provenance:
- collection of Wanda Domaszewicz
- private collection, Cracow
Bibliography:
Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz 1885-1939. Katalog dzieł malarskich, compiled by. I. Jakimowicz with the cooperation of A. Żakiewicz, National Museum, Warsaw 1990, item I 325, il. b. V [exhibit]
A. Żakiewicz, Witkacy, BOSZ Publishing House, Olszanica 2012, il. b. 37
S. I. Witkiewicz, Letters. I. Compiled by. T. Pawlak. Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy. Warsaw 2013, il. Ch.-b., p. 826
From an opinion by Dr. Anna Żakiewicz:
Maria Pietrzkiewiczówna in 1853 in Tryszki, Kaunas, in a family of small Samogitian nobility. In 1872 she graduated from the Conservatory in Warsaw under the direction of Apolinary Kątski. [In 1883 she married Stanislaw Witkiewicz, a painter, writer and art theorist, in Warsaw. The couple settled at 18b Hoża Street, where their son Stanislaw Ignacy was born on February 24, 1885. Five years later, the Witkiewicz family moved to Zakopane because of Stanislaw's tuberculosis. [Maria Witkiewiczowa died on December 3, 1931 in the "Olma" boarding house on Zamoyskiego Street in Zakopane.
[...]
At that time [1918 - footnote B.B.] Witkacy joined the Formists - an avant-garde artistic grouping and, in addition to the portraits he was currently painting, he exhibited the expressive oil paintings he was still painting in Russia and after his return, in which he experimented with color and form according to the theory of Pure Form that he developed (completed in September 1918 and published in 1919 titled New Forms in Painting and the Misunderstandings Resulting Therefrom, published by Gebethner and Wolf). At that time Witkacy allowed himself bolder experiments only in images of people close to him, such as the very portrait of his mother made in August 1918. As we know from the surviving photographs, the portrait retains an exquisitely captured likeness - dark eyes, prominent nose, narrow lips, hairstyle characteristic of older ladies at the time, and even the lacy hem of her blouse and a generous dark coat with wide lapels and the end of a handkerchief sticking out from behind her neck. However, this is where the artist's attention to the realism of the representation ends, and the madness of color begins. The green face is sharply contrasted with the red streaks of the background surrounding the head, and the dark blue of the coat is juxtaposed by the artist with the orange of the rest of the background around the red. Complementary colors are the basis of the color harmony of the work, which fulfills in practice the assumptions of the theory of Pure Form, which is complemented, as it were, by the contrast of black and white. In the portrait, black are the contours that build the structure of the whole, as well as the eyes and hair, white are the reflections of light on the face and hair of the woman.
The offered portrait is [...] a work of Pure Form, which is also supported by the marking "T.D." next to the artist's signature. A peculiarity is the repetition of the artist's signature "Witkacy" done in a different color. This is extremely rare in his oeuvre, although it sometimes happened to him. Unfortunately, the day date has been partially obliterated, but it is visible under UV light and is most likely August 25. The artist was staying in Zakopane at the time.
[...]
To sum up - the portrait of Maria Witkiewicz is absolutely extraordinary, both because of its form and the content contained in it - artistic and emotional. Moreover - it was made at a crucial moment for Witkacy's life and work, when, after the bloody experience of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution at its source, i.e. in St. Petersburg, preceded by a trip to the antipodes, he found himself in Poland on the eve of regaining independence.
