WITKACY AND OTHERS

Stefan Okołowicz and Ewa Franczak’s unique collection shows Witkacy as an avid fan of photography, busy both making photographs and collecting them. The exhibition features his famous self-portraits, an illustration of the biographical legend of a ‘great eccentric’; series of photographs in which he transformed into a mime-theatre director and actor, enacting his own look-alikes for the camera; photographic portraits of the artist’s friends, as well as interwar artistic and intellectual celebrities; scenes improvised for the camera, staged by Witkacy and his friends; series of early mountain and sea landscapes, their framing innovative and much diff erent from 19th century conventions; images of train engines; photographs in which the artist experimented with double exposure; and examples of photographic documentation of his own works, including a selection from a large set of about 100 images of his lost drawings. Also on display will be Witkacy’s drawings and paintings.

Besides Witkacy himself, the exhibition presents the work of photographers he worked with: Józef Głogowski, Tadeusz Langier and Mieczysław Choynowski. The context of photographic practices contemporary to Witkacy has been expanded to include photographs from his home region. Witkacy’s early landscapes from the Tatra mountains are juxtaposed with Tatra landscapes by Stanisław Bizański, Awit Szubert or Stanisław Krygowski. Photographs from the Witkiewicz family archive — some of the earliest examples of Polish photography — serve as introduction to the show. A large collection of portraits and self-portraits by Witkacy is presented next to portraits of him by other photographers. The famous Multiple Portrait is shown in the company of several other multiple portraits from the early 20th century.

Accompanying the selection from the Okołowicz and Franczakʼs collection are anonymous images, examples of photographs from old family albums and of the collectors’ more contemporary fascinations. The exhibition is the fi rst major presentation of this collection and the second proposition in the Latent Capital series, a project aimed at demonstrating the symbolic capital of contemporary private collections of art.

Publication suppoerted by the Minister of Culture and National Heitage of the Republic of Poland.

Publication and the exhibition Latent Capital realised with financial support from the City of Warsaw.