WITKIEWICZ, STANISLAW IGNACY

born Feb. 24, 1885, Warsaw died Sept. 18, 1939, Jeziory, Wolyna, Pol. byname Witkacy Polish painter, novelist, and playwright. After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakw, he traveled in Germany, France, and Italy. In 1914 he left for Australia as the artist and photographer of an anthropological expedition led by Bronislaw Malinowski. Three years later, as a reserve officer in the Russian Army, Witkiewicz witnessed the Russian Revolution, but in 1918 he settled at Zakopane at the foot of the Tatra Mountains. He committed suicide at the beginning of World War II. Witkiewicz's plays anticipated the Theatre of the Absurd of Ionesco and Beckett in their deliberately contorted characters and plots and their use of grotesque parody. Rapid tempos, warped time juxtapositions, and catastrophic incidents are combined with an original and symbolic use of language in such plays as Kurka wodna (1921; The Water Hen) and Wariat i zakonnica (1925; The Madman and the Nun). His works began to be revived in Poland and the West in the 1950s and are now a permanent feature of Polish theatrical repertoires.