Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz was an influential Polish philosopher, photographer, theatre practitioner, artist and writer during the early 20th Century. Whilst not famed for his work during his lifetime, the legacy still lives on today and was used by Tadeusz Kantor as an inspiration in his own work. At the epicentre of Witkiewicz's work was a need to understand man's existence and it was this that fueled much of his avant-garde works. After his enrolment in World War I, he focused his energies on painting. He used narcotics as an explorative tool to unlock the surreal within everyday life. While his methodology behind his paintings and plays were perhaps a little unorthodox, he used them as a means to investigate the condition of the human psyche. Eventually, this continual drug abuse led to his own sucide in 1939.

 

"The mystery of existence consists in unity, in plurality ... Thus every existence is commanded to find a solution in self- contradiction. The characters 'yearning for nothingness', speak about it, just as they do about other essential matters, dispassionately, as if they solved abstract, logical or philosophical problems or took part in a game with established rules. ... Witkacy's painting, with its violence and dynamism, its saturation with form and beast-and-human iconography, is like theatre congealed on canvas."

 

Jakimowicz, Irena (1990) Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Katalog Dzieł Małarskich, Warsaw: Muzeum Narodowe

 

 

"After all, there might have been nothing, not me as well - I might have never peeped out of nothingness into this world - but even stranger is the assumption that the world might never have existed without me."