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STANISLAW IGNACY WITKIEWICZ (Polish, 1885-1939) JADWIGA WITKIEWICZ (née UNRUG), ZAKOPANE vintage gel

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:25,000.00 - 35,000.00 USD
STANISLAW IGNACY WITKIEWICZ (Polish, 1885-1939) JADWIGA WITKIEWICZ (née UNRUG), ZAKOPANE vintage gel
STANISLAW IGNACY WITKIEWICZ (Polish, 1885-1939) JADWIGA WITKIEWICZ (née UNRUG), ZAKOPANE vintage gelatin silver print 67/8 x 47/8 in. (17.4 x 12.5 cm) 1923 ESTIMATE: $25,000-35,000 PROVENANCE Private Collection, WARSAW Robert Miller Gallery, NEW YORK LITERATURE Eva Franczak and Stefan Okolowicz, AGAINST NOTHINGNESS: STANISLAW IGNACY WITKIEWICZ'S PHOTOGRAPHS, Kracow, 1986, pl. 173 (illustrated) Anna Micinska, WITKACY: STANISLAW IGNACY WITKIEWICZ: LIFE AND WORK, Warsaw, 1990 In 1923 Witkiewicz made a new portrait identical to a series he had made in 1912-1914 that includes his self-portrait now in the Gilman Paper Company Collection, New York. This was a significant new person in his life, Jadwiga Unrug, grand-daughter of the painter Juliusz Kossak. This intimate portrait was made about the time she and Witkiewicz were married. An improvised extension on his camera bellows allowed him to focus tightly on the face. This framing was especially unusual at the time he made the first portraits, still uncommon in the early twenties, and is more characteristic of portraits made many years later. Stanislaw, a tormented soul living in the shadow of his father, a celebrated painter and critic who shared the same name, renamed himself Witkacy to make the distinction clear. At the time the first portraits in this style were made, Witkacy was experiencing tremendous personal struggle. Incapable of supporting himself, he lived at his parents' expense while his father was suffering with tuberculosis. One year later, at the insistence of friends, he began to see a Freudian psychiatrist about his own schizophrenic hallucinations. In February of 1914, his finacée, also named Jadwiga, committed suicide because she had fallen in love with another man. Witkacy was forever haunted by her death. By the end of the First World War, and after the death of his father, he began to practice as an artist and writer. A fascinating character, he made thousands of paintings, often while experimenting with drugs, and completed over two hundred literary and philosophical works including the important theory of Pure Form. He ended his own life in September 1939 when he learned that Soviet troops were advancing on Poland from the East.