Tadeus Langier, Zakopane. Artist: Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (Polish, Warsaw 1885-1939 Jeziory). Dimensions: Image: 12.6 x 17.6 cm (4 15/16 x 6 15/16 in.)Mount: 17.4 x 23.5 cm (6 7/8 x 9 1/4 in.). Date: 1912-13.Witkiewicz is a legendary figure in Polish cultural history not only for his multifaceted talent but also for his bohemian lifestyle and eccentric personality. A prolific painter and photographer, dramatist, and philosopher, he made hundreds of self-portraits, sketches, paintings, and studies of friends characterized by a searing self-scrutiny and existential anguish. Taken with a view camera-its lens extended by a drainpipe-this portrait of his colleague Tadeusz Langier is characteristic of the searching photographic studies he made between 1912 and 1914, a period culminating in the suicide of his fiancée. Witkiewicz himself took his own life on the eve of World War II, the day the Red Army invaded eastern Poland. Museum: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA.