STANISLAW IGNACY WITKIEWICZ (1885–1939)
DRAWINGS FROM THE 1930s
Tuesday, February 7 – Saturday, April 22, 2006
416 East 59th Street,
New York, NY 10022
tel: (212) 753-4444,
info@ubugallery.com
Stanislaw
I.
Witkiewicz,
Composition,
1933, Pencil on paper, Signed, dated and annotated on recto, 13 1/4
x 10 inches (33.7 x 25.4 cm), (WITK 38)
The exhibition at Ubu Gallery presents over sixty rare works by the Polish painter, photographer, writer and theorist.
Witkiewicz, also known as Witkacy, was a central figure among the Polish intellectual elite and is considered to be one of the most creative and acute minds of interwar Europe. In all aspects of his life’s work, he championed the individual creative spirit and defended it against the mechanized world, which he believed was alienating humanity from the true structure of the universe, in his terms the “mystery of existence.” His metaphysical philosophies about the human condition are expressed with immediacy in his drawings of grotesque, half-human creatures in phantasmagoric landscapes. While the artist’s proto-modern, psychological, photographic portraits (a small selection of which will also be on view) are arguably his best-known visual works, Witkiewicz’s drawings offer unique insight into the eccentricities of this tortured and brilliant artist.
>>> DOWNLOAD UBU GALLERY’S CATALOGUE OF WITKACY’S DRAWINGS HERE