Stanisław Witkiewicz

:"For his son, the writer who lived 1885–1939, see Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz."Stanisław Witkiewicz (May 8, 1851 in Samogitia –5 September 1915 in Lovran) was a Polish painter, architect, writer and art theoretician.

Life

Witkiewicz studied in Saint Petersburg, 1869–71, then in Munich, 1872–75.

He created the Zakopane style ("styl zakopiański") or Witkiewicz style ("styl witkiewiczowski") in architecture [See picture in Polish article on "styl zakopiański".] . He was strongly associated with Zakopane and promoted it in the art community.His son, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, became a famous painter, playwright, novelist and philosopher, also known (from the conflation of his surname and middle name) by the mononymous pseudonym "Witkacy." The son's godmother was the internationally famous actress Helena Modrzejewska, whom the elder Witkiewicz in 1876 had nearly accompanied to California in the United States.

Witkiewicz had strong views against formal education: "school is completely at odds with the psychological make-up of human beings". He applied this principle in his son's upbringing and was disappointed when the 20-year-old Witkacy chose to enroll at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków.

In 1908, suffering from tuberculosis, the elder Witkiewicz left his family in Zakopane to settle in Lovranno, in present-day Croatia, where he died in 1915.

ee also

* Impressionism
* Landscape
* Realism
* Tatra mountains
* List of Poles

Notes