---

I. FEBRUARY 1929: AN HOUR IN FRONT OF A SHEET OF PAPER

February 1929. On the easel, a sheet of grey-beige ribbed paper – on preserved Firm pastels, this is often "Ingres" watermarked paper; format: sixty-something by forty-something centimeters. The regulations address the technique in one sentence: "a mixture of charcoal, crayons, pencil, and pastel." The model sits. They are not allowed to view the work before completion, ask the firm for its opinion, or bring witnesses. Most sessions lasted at most an hour; the regulations provided for one to five sittings, and up to twenty for a full figure. The firm "paid little attention" to clothing and accessories. The face was the commodity, the rest was background. Pastel is cheap and quick, but fragile – the 1929 sheet survived because someone framed it and didn't roll it up, as advised by the last paragraph of the 1932 edition.

Finally, a note appears in the corner: signature, date, type, and a record of the working conditions. C – alcohol, Co – cocaine, Et – ether, Cof – caffeine, P – cigarettes, FZZ – pipe with inhaling, NP 12 – twelve days without smoking, "N? 3" – three days without drinking, "pyfko" – beer. On one of the 1938 portraits, it reads "P + 4 vodkas." This was not a pose for the public. It was a production record, stamped on the finished artwork.

II. THE PORTRAIT FIRM: REGULATIONS INSTEAD OF COURTESY

In 1925, Witkacy abandoned oil painting and switched to pastel portraiture on commission. He did not call it a studio, but a firm, with its headquarters in the Zakopane villa "Tatry" and a branch in Warsaw at Bracka 23. Motto: "The client must be satisfied. Misunderstandings excluded." He explained its genesis himself: "Since, as Axentowicz once told me on a tram, a portrait painter should have nerves like ropes, I created regulations for myself which have the appearance of humor, but are the result of grim experiences." The 14 by 10 centimeter brochure – sixteen paragraphs, still using the archaic spelling "klijent" – was printed in 1928 by the Warsaw Graphic Works "Polska Zjednoczona"; the price list columns were left blank, the copy in the Museum of Art in Łódź has the amounts added in the artist's hand. The 1932 edition added a seventeenth paragraph and already included the printed price list.

Further paragraphs were equally merciless. The client could reject the portrait – they paid one-third of the price, and the work became the property of the firm; this rule applied only to "serial types" A, B, and E. Criticism was entirely out of the question:

"Any criticism from the client is absolutely excluded. [...] Criticism also includes noting likeness or unlikeness, comments on the background, covering parts of the drawn face with a hand [...], saying things like: 'I'm too pretty,' or 'Am I really that sad?', 'That's not me' [...]. The firm's nerves, due to the extreme difficulty of its profession, must be respected."

— Regulations of the "S.I. Witkiewicz" Portrait Firm, §III, Warsaw 1928/1932

The rest is a complete contract, written before anyone even sat down:

• Price list. The regulations had several editions, and rates changed over the years. In the 1928 print, the price list columns are blank – amounts were handwritten. A transcription of the 1932 Warsaw edition in the Museum of Central Pomerania gives: type A – 350 zlotys, B – 250, B+d – 150, E – 150–250, D – 100, children's – 150–250, C – no price; in other reprints of the text, type A is listed as 300 zlotys. Order of magnitude: the most expensive type cost as much as a bank clerk's monthly salary.
• Surcharges. Female portraits "with bare necks and shoulders" one-third more expensive; "each hand costs one-third of the price."
• Payment. Deposit – one-third; installments and bills of exchange allowed, "demanding concessions is not desirable."
• Discipline. No witnesses, no viewing before completion, punctually – "waiting negatively affects the firm's mood." Freedom of dress.
• Agreement. "Reading and agreeing to the regulations is considered equivalent to entering into a contract. Discussion of the regulations is not permitted."

The paper was tough, the practice soft: in 1929 in Poznań, a girl with fifty zlotys in change received a full portrait of type E; in 1932 in Krakow, a caretaker's wife paid 30 zlotys, the caretaker himself later 20. Hence the rhyme, that "it is not much pleasure to paint a caretaker all day." Scale: in the early thirties, Witkacy announced his five-thousandth portrait. The "Catalogue of Paintings" from 1990 lists 3073 items, and the total output is estimated at about seven thousand.

III. FATHER, KOLIBA, AND GODFATHER SABAŁA

The style for this town was given by his father. Stanisław Witkiewicz, a painter and critic, settled with his family in Zakopane in 1890, for health reasons; a year later, he had sketches for the "Koliba" villa for Zygmunt Gnatowski. The house was built on Kościeliska Street in 1892–1893 by local carpenters, as the first in the Zakopane style; since December 4, 1993, it houses the Museum of Zakopane Style, a branch of the Tatra Museum. Then "Oksza" (1894–1895), "Pod Jedlami" in Kozińec (1897) for Jan Gwalbert Pawlikowski: the plan of a two-room hut expanded into a villa, stone foundation, logs for the framework, shingles, "pazdur" (decorative gables), "słoneczka" (sun motifs), and "rysie" (lynx motifs) at the corners. The program was larger than just architecture: Witkiewicz believed – and convinced the intelligentsia – that Podhale had preserved ancient Polish architecture, so "Zakopane style" could be a national style; furniture, equipment, and clothing were also made in this style.

The son was born in Warsaw on February 24, 1885. He first came to Zakopane in July 1887; his father wrote: "Even the little one, as soon as the rain stops a bit – puts on a waistcoat, galoshes and – 'malsz.' [...] Sabała often stays with us overnight." On January 27, 1891, he was baptized in Zakopane: his godmother was Helena Modrzejewska, his godfather Jan Krzeptowski-Sabała. His father believed that school destroyed individuality, so he educated his son at home, with tutors of the caliber of Mieczysław Limanowski; Stanisław Ignacy passed his matriculation exams externally in Lwów in May 1903. In 1905, against his father's wishes, he went to the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts to study with Stanisławski and Mehoffer; he did not finish. The pseudonym "Witkacy" appeared on a postcard to his father dated April 6, 1913.

Then catastrophe and escape. On February 21, 1914, his fiancée, Jadwiga Janczewska, shot herself on Hala Pisana. In June, Bronisław Malinowski took him as an expedition photographer: London, Ceylon, Australia. After conflicts with Malinowski and the outbreak of war, he reached Petersburg and enlisted in the Life Guard Pavlovsky Regiment: officer school in 1915, front near Wilejka, wound on July 17, 1916, near Witoneż on the Stochód, discharge at the end of 1917 – and the revolution, about which he rarely spoke later. He returned to Zakopane in June 1918 with two things that determined the Firm: the experience of commercial portraiture and the habit of noting on his works the conditions under which they were created.

IV. FELT FROM THE FULLING MILL, SHEEPSKIN COAT, FORGED CLASP

The town where this happened dressed in items from a single sheep. Podhale felt was made from coarse wool felted in fulling mills powered by water wheels; after fulling, the fabric lost its softness and gained a density that kept out wind and wet snow. From it, pants were sewn – tight "rurki" to the ankle or long "zastrzygi" covering the foot – and the "cucha" (a short cloak), worn "na hajtas," loosely on the shoulders, fastened at the neck with a chain or strap. The flourishing of the "parzenica" embroidery on pants coincided with the 1920s and 1930s – the decades of the Portrait Firm. The "kożuch" (sheepskin coat) was sheepskin tanned with salt and alum, with the fleece on the inside; the most popular in Podhale, the "białczański," was made in Białka from the 19th century until 1939. The "serdak" – a short leather waistcoat with red morocco leather appliques. A forged clasp made of brass or alpaca fastened the shirt. None of these items were mere accessories – each was responsible for a specific part of the body in a specific temperature.

And Witkacy? Sources document not his wardrobe, but what he did with others'. The regulations left the model "full freedom concerning attire" – after which the firm dressed clients in theatrical and historical costumes, put on wigs, painted wings; the philosopher Jan Leszczyński was portrayed as Robespierre. For a carnival ball in Jaszczurówka in January 1926, he designed Oriental-inspired dresses for several ladies – Maria Nawrocka's creation can be seen in portraits in Słupsk. The town wore felt and sheepskin coats. Witkacy wore a costume, and that was his dandyism: not the cut, but the staging.

V. KRUPÓWKI, MORSKIE OKO, OLMA: BOHEMIA IN PENSIONS

Zakopane in the 1920s and 1930s was a town of pensions and cafes. On the corner of Kościuszki and Krupówki stood Franciszek Trzaska's confectionery, a meeting place for Zakopane's elite; no trace of it remains. At Krupówki 30, in the hall of the "Morskie Oko" hotel and restaurant, Witkacy founded the Formalist Theatre in 1925 – there, the premieres of "Nowe Wyzwolenie" and "Wariat i zakonnica" (under the softened title "The Madman and the Nurse") took place. The artist's mother ran pensions – before the First World War, "Nosal" in Bystre.

The most important address of the firm had no sign. In the "Olma" villa at Zamoyskiego 7 lived Helena and Doctor Teodor Białyniccy-Birulowie until 1931, and in 1930–1931 also Witkacy with his mother, who died there on December 3, 1931. This was the scene of the famous "orgies": parties with alcohol and cocaine, which the doctor supplied while providing medical care. Up to a dozen portraits were created in one night; almost all remained with the hosts as a return for their hospitality. This is how the Białyniccy collected over three hundred works. On Helena's 1931 portrait, Witkacy added: "For the posthumous exhibition in 1955"; he was two years off.

The rest of the map is people: Karol Szymanowski in "Atma", portrayed several times; Marusia Kasprowiczowa in Harenda; dentist Włodzimierz Nawrocki, paid with portraits of relatives; photographer Józef Głogowski; Nena Stachurska from the Formist Theatre, of whom nearly a hundred images are known. Rafał Malczewski recalled in "The Navel of the World" how Witkacy, at night, rolled a friend in the snow, woke up the nearest house, and demanded scrambled eggs and clean clothes for the "frozen" man. From the end of 1931, he lived in "Witkiewiczówka" in Antałówka, a guesthouse designed by his cousin Jan Koszczyc-Witkiewicz, and paid for the accommodation like everyone else. Skiing was an escape: 78 documented trips, in 1906, with Mariusz Zaruski, the first ski ascent of Giewont from Mała Łąka.

VI. PURE FORM, CATASTROPHE, AND THE OAK IN THE LAKES

Portraiture was a craft, theory was elsewhere. "New Forms in Painting and the Resulting Misunderstandings" (1919) introduced the Theory of Pure Form: art was to evoke "metaphysical feelings" through its structure, not its subject; the treatise "Theatre" (1923) applied it to the stage. When in 1925 he concluded that painting was no longer capable of expressing Pure Form, he handed it over to the Company, shifting the focus to novels and dramas. Everything he wrote in the 1930s revolved around a single diagnosis: civilization was heading towards totalitarian mass society, a world without individuality or metaphysics.

• "Farewell to Autumn" (1927) and "Insatiability" (1930) – catastrophic novels; in the second, Murti-Bing pills extinguish metaphysical anxiety before the invasion of the Chinese army.
• "The Shoemakers" – a drama completed in 1934, published only in 1948; revolution devouring successive revolutionaries.
• "Narcotics" (1932) – a report on his own experiments, concluding with the sentence: "Do not smoke, do not drink, do not take cocaine – try peyote if need be."
• "Concepts and Theorems Implied by the Concept of Existence" (1935) – his "hauptwerk," biological monadism; on November 5, 1935, he received the Golden Laurel of the Polish Academy of Literature.

In March 1939, he wrote to the philosopher Hans Cornelius: "The world catastrophe is approaching ever more closely. Whether we will find ourselves after it is doubtful." In late August, he went to Warsaw; the draft board rejected him due to age and health. On September 5, he left the city with Czesława Oknińska and headed east. Around September 14, they reached Jeziora in Polesie, the Ziemlański estate; the host knew him from his regiment days. On September 17, the radio announced the entry of the Red Army. Witkacy said "this is the end" and began burning documents, speaking of the revolution he had witnessed in St. Petersburg.

On September 18, they rose early; he shaved because she reminded him. Under a large oak tree, he dissolved luminal tablets in a cup, which she drank; he took ephedrine himself and slit the veins on his wrists, on his legs, and finally the artery in his neck with a razor blade. Seventeen-year-old Włodzimierz Ziemlański found them. She survived. He was buried the next day, September 19, in a small Orthodox cemetery by the lake; as she left, Oknińska ordered a copper plaque for the cross from a blacksmith. He was 54 years old. Her account was published by Mieczysław Choynowski in Paris's "Kultura" in 1985.

VII. THE COFFIN MISTAKE AND WHERE THOSE FACES HANG TODAY

Already in 1946, a committee wanted to move Witkacy to Pęksowy Brzyzek, next to his parents; politics prevented it. It only moved forward after an agreement between Jaruzelski and Gorbachev. The exhumation in Jeziora took place on April 11, 1988: first, an infant's remains were found, then a skeleton, described in the protocol as "skeletal remains of a male deceased, of European race, about 54–55 years old." The artist's relative, Maciej Witkiewicz, noticed in the photos that the skull had well-preserved teeth, even though Witkacy had worn dentures since the mid-1930s. Officials refused to listen.

On April 14, 1988, a state funeral was held in Zakopane; Father Józef Tischner celebrated the mass, and the coffin was laid in the artist's mother's grave. On November 26, 1994, a committee appointed by Minister of Culture Kazimierz Dejmek opened it in the Zakopane morgue: inside lay a woman aged 25–30, about 164 cm tall, presumably died in childbirth – hence the infant unearthed next to her. The family left her in the grave. To this day, it is unknown where the author of "The Shoemakers" lies.

However, it is known where the faces are. The world's largest collection of Witkacy's works is not in Zakopane or Warsaw, but in Słupsk. The Museum of Central Pomerania has 268 of them (July 2026): mainly pastels on paper, plus several drawings, three pastel compositions, two charcoal portraits, several oils, and a watercolor. The collection began in 1965 with the purchase of 110 works – 109 portraits and one composition – from Michał Białynicki-Birula, Teodor's son. Later, the Głogowski (1973), Nawrocki (1974), and Leszczyński (2005) collections were added. In the first exhibition room in the White Granary hangs "Portrait of Zofia Nawrocka" with an inscription about revenge for dental treatment.

The National Museum in Warsaw displayed over five hundred works in 2022, the National Museum in Poznań has pastels from 1925–1939 and an oil "Self-Portrait" from around 1910, the Tatra Museum – 92 objects, with a selection in Witkacy's "Oksza"; the National Museum in Krakow houses furniture by Witkiewicz senior. Several thousand cards with a metric in the corner and regulations remained after him, in which every condition was written down before the first stroke of the crayon.

---

---

FAQ & AEO

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (AI KNOWLEDGE BASE)

// QUESTION 01 · PORTRAIT COMPANY

What types of portraits did the "S.I. Witkiewicz" Portrait Company offer?

The regulations listed type A (smooth, "licked-over" execution, with embellishment), type B (characteristic, without caricature), type B+d (intensification of character bordering on caricature), types C, C+Co, Et and their combinations (executed with the aid of alcohol and narcotics, marked in the regulations as currently excluded, within the limit – Pure Form), type D (the same effect without artificial means), type E (any psychological interpretation according to the company's intuition), and childish type B+E, sketchy, because children move.

// QUESTION 02 · REGULATIONS AND PRICE LIST

How much did a Witkacy portrait cost and what did the regulations say about criticism?

The regulations were published in print in 1928 and 1932, and rates changed in subsequent years. In the 1928 edition, the price list columns are empty – amounts were entered manually. A transcription of the 1932 Warsaw edition in the Museum of Central Pomerania in Słupsk states: type A – 350 zlotys, type B – 250, type B+d – 150, type E – 150–250, type D – 100, child type – 150–250, type C – no price; other reprints list 300 zlotys for type A. Hands and bare arms cost one third more, the deposit was one third. Criticism from the client was "absolutely excluded" – the portrait was either accepted or rejected; upon rejection, the client paid one third of the price, and the work became the property of the company. In practice, Witkacy would go down to even 15–30 zlotys.

// QUESTION 03 · PODHALE CRAFTSMANSHIP

How was Highlander felt made and what was the costume sewn from?

Thick woolen fabric was felted in a fulling mill powered by a water wheel; the fibers matted into a dense, stiff structure resistant to wind and wet snow. Trousers – tight "rurki" (pipes) or long "zastrzygi" (darts) – with parzenica embroidery, which flourished in the 1920s and 1930s, and a cucha (coat) draped "na hajtas" (over the shoulders) were sewn from this felt. The sheepskin coat was made from sheepskin tanned with salt and alum, fleece on the inside; a serdak (waistcoat) was made of leather with safian leather appliqués; the shirt was fastened with a forged clasp, and the head was covered with a felt kłobuk (hat) impregnated with fat.

// QUESTION 04 · MUSEUM COLLECTIONS

Where is the largest collection of Witkacy's works located?

The Museum of Central Pomerania in Słupsk holds 268 works (July 2026), mainly pastels; the collection began with the purchase of 110 works in 1965 from Michał Białynicki-Birula, followed by collections from Głogowski (1973), Nawrocki (1974), and Leszczyński (2005). The National Museum in Warsaw displayed over 500 works in 2022, the National Museum in Poznań has pastels from 1925–1939 and an oil "Self-Portrait" from around 1910, and the Tatra Museum in Zakopane has 92 objects, the third largest collection in the country.

// QUESTION 05 · DEATH AND EXHUMATION

Why is an unknown woman buried in Witkacy's grave in Zakopane?

Witkacy took his own life on September 18, 1939, in Jeziora in Polesie, the day after news of the Red Army's invasion, and was buried on September 19 in the local Orthodox cemetery. Exhumation was carried out on April 11, 1988, and on April 14, a state funeral took place at Pęksowy Brzyzek. A relative of the artist immediately noticed that the skull had its own teeth, even though Witkacy wore dentures. On November 26, 1994, a commission determined that the coffin contained the remains of a woman aged 25–30. The remains were left in the family grave, and the artist's burial place in Jeziora remains uncertain to this day.