The Witkacy by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz

In this way, visitors are just 1 click away from this informative database as they amble through the exhibition rooms. Production unit, curators, procurement policy (external as well): each has its role to play. The content comes directly from the ‘ensemble bank’, a broadly-supported working platform that encourages diverse layers of meaning around the artworks. This public version is no island unto itself it is enframed within a larger digital whole. The application has been fully developed in-house at the M HKA, and is easily accessible via a wide range of devices: smartphones, tablets and desktop computers. With the help of these new media, our aim is to offer our artworks a better and fuller array of support for their presentation and public understanding. The M HKA Ensembles represent our first steps towards initiating the public to today's art-related digital landscape. But in a scene that wouldn’t have been amiss in one of his satires, it eventually emerged that bungling officials had buried the wrong corpse – the subject at the centre of the excellent Polish film Mystyfikacja. Originally buried in a far-flung corner of the Ukraine, Witkacy’s body was returned to Zakopane in 1988. When the Red Army crossed into Poland on October 17, 1939, sensing the end of civilisation, he shot himself. A rabid anti-communist, Witkacy was hell-bent on proving that an individual’s aims would always be different from that of society and state. He experimented with all forms of modern art, started his own theatre company in Zakopane (an hour south of Kraków) and expanded on his philosophical theories. Twisted portraits of his high-society friends (heads springing from penises, beastly animal shapes flying in the background) became his trademark. As he plunged into heavy spells of morphine, cocaine and peyote abuse his paintings became all the more inspired. On hearing of the outbreak of WWI he returned to Poland and served with distinction against the Germans before being wounded and continuing his descent into the depression that was to dominate his life. The mysterious suicide of his fiancé in 1914 compelled him to seek solace in Australasia where he became involved in scientific expeditions.

Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz more commonly known as 'Witkacy' was a Polish playwright, novelist, painter, photographer and philosopher.

The Witkacy by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz