Description
Pastel, paper pasted on cardboard; 65 x 49 cm Signed p. d.: Witkacy. Above: '931 III NP 2.5 | (T. B E) Rectangular paper sticker on back: ART | RAMEN FACTORY | F. BURDYŃSKI | WARSAW, BRACKA 18 | PHONE 177-76
Asking price 150000
Estimate 200000 - 250000
Stanislaw Ignacy WITKIEWICZ (WITKACY)
1885 Warsaw -1939 Jeziory in Polesia region
Painter, draughtsman and photographer, playwright and novelist, philosopher, art theoretician and critic; member of the first Polish avant-garde group, the Formists; author of the aesthetic theory of Pure Form; founder of the Portrait Company. Son of Stanislaw Witkiewicz - painter and art critic. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow under Józef Mehoffer (1905-1909). During this time he made several artistic trips to Italy, France and Germany. In 1914 he traveled to Australia as a member of ethnographer Bronislaw Malinowski's team. From 1914 to 1918 he stayed in St. Petersburg serving as an officer in the tsarist army. From this period came his first pastel works - portraits and expressive compositions. In 1918-1924 he belonged to the "Formists" group, painting oil compositions according to the tenets of the "pure form" theory he created. After 1924, he limited his painting work to the activities of the "S. I. Witkiewicz Portrait Company" - creating pastel portraits according to the rules of the Company. In 1928-1932 he experimented on himself the effects of drugs, mainly peyote and cocaine; he described his experiences in the book "Drugs". He created paintings in a portrait studio, where there was a price list and patterns to order further "departures" from the realism of the portrayed person in favor of his artistic expressionist vision. Witkacy's portrait work was for a long time perceived as an artistic extravagance and peculiarity. Verification and confirmation of the artist's genius came in the following years. His monographic exhibition, presented from 1983 at the Pompidou Center in Paris, was enthusiastically received. The Portrait Company produced seven types of portraits, which, from the Rules and Regulations written down by the artist, were marked with the letters: A, B, B d, C, D, E, B E. Types A, B and E were representations that realistically, even veristically rendered the models' physiognomies. "The mimetic rendering of features, expressive chiaroscuro modeling and fluidity of contours had a Young Poland provenance, deriving from the portrait art of Stanisław Wyspiański and Józef Mehoffer. On the other hand, the abstract backgrounds composed of overlapping planes surrounded by thick lines were a reminiscence of Formist experience" (Irena Kossowska, IS PAN, www. culture. pl). The portrait presented here is a combination of type B ("characteristic. Some simplification, emphasis of features, less licked work) and E (intuitively achieved result of type A and B, without copying nature as such, i.e. other means of capturing the form). The artist, in his customary manner, included information by placing an inscription next to the signature: (T. B E). Located next to the inscription: NP. 2.5, means that Witkacy at the time of painting the portrait had not smoked for 2.5 days.
