The Witkacy by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz

Of about forty plays written by Witkiewicz between 19, twenty-one survive, and only Jan Maciej Karol Hellcat met with any public success during the author's lifetime. He associated with a group of 'formist' artists in the early 1920s and wrote most of his plays during this period.

He soon entered into a major creative phase, setting out his principles in New Forms in Painting and Introduction to the Theory of Pure Form in the Theatre. He had begun to support himself through portrait painting and continued to do so on his return to Zakopane in Poland.

His later works would show his fear of social revolution and foreign invasion, often couched in absurdist language. He claimed that he worked out his philosophical principles during an artillery barrage, and that when the Revolution broke out he was elected political commissar of his regiment. Witkiewicz witnessed the Russian Revolution while stationing in St Petersburg. His ailing father, a Polish patriot, was deeply grieved by the youngster's decision and died in 1915 without seeing his son again. A happen-stance citizen of the Russian Empire, Witkiewicz went to St Petersburg and was commissioned as an officer in the Imperial army. Following a crisis in Witkiewicz's personal life due to the suicide of his fiancée Jadwiga Janczewska, he was invited by Malinowski to act as draftsman and photographer on a 1914 expedition to Oceania, a venture that was interrupted by the onset of World War I. Witkiewicz was close friends with Karol Szymanowski and, from childhood, with Bronisław Malinowski and Zofia Romer. In accordance with his father's antipathy to the 'servitude of the school,' the boy was home-schooled and encouraged to develop his talents across a range of creative fields. Witkiewicz was reared at the family home in Zakopane. His godmother was the internationally famous actress Helena Modrzejewska. Both of his parents were born in the Samogitian region of Lithuania. His mother was Maria Pietrzkiewicz Witkiewiczowa. Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (Polish: 24 February 1885 – 18 September 1939), commonly known as Witkacy, was a Polish writer, painter, philosopher, playwright, novelist, and photographer active in the interwar period.īorn in Warsaw, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz was a son of the painter, architect and an art critic Stanisław Witkiewicz.

The Witkacy by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz