Dimensions: 63.3 x 47.5 cm
signed, dated and described at the bottom: 'Auto Witkacy 1918' and 'T.D [in circle] | G.R [in circle]'.
on the reverse a deposit sticker of the National Museum in Warsaw
Provenance
The collection of Teodor Białynicki-Birula
the collection of Michał Białynicki-Biruli
the collection of Aneta Karczewska, Gdansk
Jan Leszłowski collection, Sopot
private collection, Poland
Agra Art, June 2019
private collection, Poland
Exhibited
St.Ign.Witkiewicz, Tymon Niesiołowski, August Zamoyski, Society of Friends of Fine Arts in Cracow, 1919, cat. no. 17 (?)
First exhibition of Polish Formists, Polish Art Club, Hotel Polonia, Warsaw, April-May 1919 (?).
Witkacy. Seismograph of the Age of Acceleration, National Museum in Warsaw, July 1-October 9, 2022
Literature
Witkacy's letter to the vice-president (?) of TPSP in Kraków ( Oct. 1918) in: Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Letters I, ed. Tomasz Pawlak, Warsaw 2013, pp. 410, 411, 413
Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz 1885-1939. catalog of paintings, edited by Irena Jakimowicz with the cooperation of Anna Żakiewicz, National Museum, Warsaw 1990, cat. no. II/114
Anna Żakiewicz, Witkacy, Olszanica 2012, pp. 42 and 43 (ill.).
Anna Żakiewicz, Witkacy. Painting/Painting, Olszanica 2018, p.21 (il.)
Anna Żakiewicz, Witkacy, Olszanica 2015 (1st ed.) and 2020 (2nd ed.), p.42 and 43 (il.)
Witkacy. Seismograph of the Epoch of Acceleration, edited by Zofia Machnicka, Paweł Polit, exhibition catalog, National Museum in Warsaw, Warsaw 2022, p.240 (il.)
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 Cracow Academy of Fine Arts 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.
