Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, PORTRAIT OF THE SPIRITUAL ROSE, August 1933

64.5 x 48.3 cm - pastel, beige (originally gray) paper pasted on cardboard, 64.5 x 48.3 cm

Signed p. d.: Witkacy | 1933; next to: VIII NP | Nπ | (T.B + E)



The painting is accompanied by an expert's report by Dr. Anna Żakiewicz dated February 2025.



The portrait of Rosa Duchova, née Müller, primo voto Dubielska, bears the signature Witkacy, which means that the portrait was made for a person close to the artist. Official works of the Portrait Company were signed Ignacy Witkiewicz.



Róża Müllerówna (1891-1952) was a student at the convent school in Staniątki near Niepołomice. In 1907 she met her later second husband Kazimierz Duch (1890-1954), the brother of a schoolmate, whom she was to marry when they both came of age. In 1910, however, her family induced her to marry Stanislaw Dubielski, 24 years older than her, a junior high school teacher, whom she divorced in 1918. After changing her religion to Calvinism, she was able to marry her first fiancé in 1921. Toward the end of Rosa's life, they both returned to Catholicism.

Kazimierz Duch was a major in the Polish Army and studied law and philosophy at Jagiellonian University. He was one of the founders of the Rifle Squads. During World War I, he served in the 20th Galician Infantry Regiment on the Russian front, where he was taken prisoner. During the 1920 Polish-Bolshevik War, he commanded the 2nd Battalion of the 1st Podhale Rifle Regiment. He was starost of Nowy Sącz (1926-27), then deputy governor of Cracow (until 1929), deputy mayor of Cracow (1931-33) and director of the Local Government Department at the Ministry of Internal Affairs. On March 1, 1933, he became Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Welfare. He was a member of the Polish Sejm of the third and fourth terms and a senator of the fifth term. During the German occupation, he took part in secret teaching. Thanks to his help, Witkacy was able to publish his main philosophical work, Concepts and Theorems Implied by the Concept of Existence (1935). [see S.I. Witkiewicz, Letters to his wife (1932-1935), ed. J. Degler, Warsaw 2010, pp. 482-485]

Not surprisingly, the artist repeatedly portrayed both spouses and their son Roman (Kazimierz - 5 portraits, Róża - 4, Roman - 2), and in December 1934 he also made an extremely impressive joint portrait against a landscape background.

Róża Duchowa was a beautiful woman with a slender face, long narrow nose, dark eyes, well-defined thin eyebrows, carefully lipsticked red lips and hair below her ears styled according to the fashion of the time in fluffy waves, with a parting and a lush fringe falling on her forehead. Her portrait, made in August 1933, takes into account and exposes all of these elements, in accordance, incidentally, with the B type, which, according to the Portrait Company's Regulations, was "a distinctive type, but without the shadow of caricature [...] with a certain undercutting of distinctive features, which does not exclude 'prettiness' in female portraits. The relationship to the model objective." The image of Mrs. Rose, however, is a mixture of types. The artist added the "E" designation, which implied "any psychological interpretation, according to the Company's intuition," that is, a certain looseness of form combined with an emphasis on the beauty of the model. The color scheme of the portrait is interesting. The intense blue color of the coat (or jacket) is echoed in the delicate reflections in the woman's dark hair and her eyes, although Mrs. Spiritual was dark-eyed. Witkacy often used such a trick to balance the overall composition. In turn, the delicate light green background around the model's head emphasizes her expressive beauty well. Other markings next to the artist's signature (NP and Nπ) indicate that Witkacy did not smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol during the portrait session, moreover, it was not very appropriate in front of the deputy and at the same time the protector's wife. Instead, the portrait contains a humorous element characteristic of the artist. Mrs. Duchowa is wearing a white fox etoll around her neck, whose moustache hangs from her right shoulder. Witkacy has greatly simplified the animal's head, and its tiny blue eyes give the impression of being exfoliated.

The portrait of Rosa Duchowa is significant in that it not only constitutes an important part of both the artist's biography and that of his surroundings, but also presents a person belonging to the establishment of the Second Republic, whose members Witkacy liked to portray, because they were not only prominent figures for him, but also actors in the specific theatrum mundi that was the main material of his Portrait Company.



From the expert opinion of Dr. Anna Żakiewicz

Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (Warsaw 1885 - Jeziory in Volhynia 1939) was educated at home under his father, Stanislaw Witkiewicz. In 1903 he passed his high school diploma in Lviv. In 1904 he began traveling, including to Vienna, Italy, Munich, Paris and London. From 1904 to 1910 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow with Prof. Jozef Mehoffer, interrupted by periods of study with Władysław Ślewiński. In 1914 he left with Bronislaw Malinowski's expedition to Australia, and from there went directly to St. Petersburg, where he enlisted in the Russian army after the outbreak of WWI. In Russia, he witnessed the Bolshevik Revolution.

After returning to the country in 1918, he became a member of the "Formists" group, with which he exhibited from 1918 to 1922. In the painting of this period, he came closest to putting into practice his own theory of Pure Form, formulated during the war (it also applied to drama). Along with Leon Chwistek, he was the main theoretician of the grouping. After 1924, he operated as a one-man "S. I. Witkiewicz Portrait Company'' making portraits on commission. At the same time, he continued his literary (dramas, novels) and philosophical work, but above all he practiced the "art of living" that united all forms of his activity, appreciated only at the end of the 20th century. He committed suicide at the beginning of World War II, the day after the Soviet aggression against Poland.