Arthur Rubinstein, Zakopane

A brilliant and eccentric playwright, painter, and novelist, Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz also worked extensively with photography in 1910–14 and again around 1930. His intimate portraits of friends, such as the pianist Arthur Rubinstein, were taken at his family residence in Zakopane, a Galician vacation town. They concentrate on the inner spirit of the subject while pointedly ignoring conventional appearances; at times, as here, they seem even to blur distinctions between masculine and feminine posture or address. Prescient and daring, these portraits, made as gifts for friends, remained unexhibited and unpublished during Witkiewicz’s lifetime.