Szkice estetyczne (Esthetic sketches)

Small octavo 17x11.5 cm., wrappers, 166pp. In the original dust wrapper from F. Hoesick, Warsaw. Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz aka Witkacy (1885-1939) was an extraordinary gifted artist, photographer, dramatist, novelist and philosopher. He developed a fantastic expressionism and participated in the Formist group in Kraków from 1917 to 1919. Here he outlines his differences with all of the art theories and movements of modernism in general and breaks with Formist movement and its proponents. With his usual brilliance, he deconstructs all the foundations of modernism, in addition to throwing doubt on the validity of art in the current age altogether. For him, this ultimately led to an abandonment of conventional painting in 1924, when Witkacy opened his portrait shop with its peculiar set of terms for prospective clients, and experimented with various drugs and alcohol to explore unusual psychic states with his subjects, all meticulously noted on the works. His cynical attitude was foreshadowed in the arguments propounded here, where the artist must now reach out to complex and perverse means to stimulate the viewer toward experiencing the strangeness of existence, our metaphysical sensations --once available, but now disappeared due to the current age with its democratic, industrial, social and economic conditions. all these factors have removed vital spiritual content and true meaning. This estrangement amd alienation dogged Witkiewicz throughout his life. It led to his being dismissed as a serious artist altogether, whereas in a later era and particularly with post-post modernism he can be seen as having come into his own. Today he is recognized for his pioneering work on the stage, his prophetic novels and original visual work. OCLC locates four institutional holdings in North America (NYPL, Harvard, UChi, OH State). This copy near fine in original dust wrapper.