Dimensions: 68.5 x 49 cm
Signed at the bottom: 'p.p.c. | Witkacy | T (E + d) | NP NΠ' and inscribed l.d.: 'Conchita | czyli trumf | bestji.'
on the reverse a stamp from an exhibition in the Tatra Museum in Zakopane in 1985 with the handwritten signature of the exhibition commissioner and three inventory numbers: 'Dep. S/1143/MT', 'dep. 200 MRA' and 'KW MR641/75'.
Origins
Collection of the heirs of the portrayed, Zakopane
Exhibited
Olga Wojakowa - Miss Zakopane 1925. portraits of Witkacy, Dr. Titus Chałubiński Tatra Museum in Zakopane, May 21-September 26, 2016.
Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz. Faces, Dr. Tytus Chałubiński Tatra Museum in Zakopane, June-September 1985.
Literature
Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz. Letters II, compiled by. Tomasz Pawlak, Stefan Okołowicz, Janusz Degler, Warsaw 2014, p. 166 (ill.), p. 167
Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (1885-1939), catalog of paintings, ed. Irena Jakimowicz, Anna Żakiewicz, Warsaw 1990, no. I/1349, p. 116.
Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz. Faces, exhibition catalog, introduction by Joanna Piechowska, Zakopane 1985, item 63.
M. Bauman, Witkacy in the Will, "Together" 1976, no. 4, p. 37 (ill.).
Michal Mackiewicz, What will happen to Witkacy's paintings? The unusual fate of the Rzeszow collection, "Profile" 1976, no. 8, p. 18 (ill.)
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.
