AustLit

Stanislaw Witkiewicz ('Witkacy') was a 20th century Polish artist, playwright and author. He briefly visited Australia in 1914, accompanying his close friend, anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, who was attending an international science congress. En route they stopped at Ceylon, arriving in Australia in late July 1914. Witkiewicz appears to have left Australia within a few weeks of the outbreak of World War I. He subsequently travelled to St Petersberg where he enlisted in the Russian army. He was seriously wounded in 1915, after which he spent the remainder of the war in St Petersberg, eventually returning to Poland in July 1918.

Witkiewicz's observations of colonial society made during his 1914 travels inspired his 'tropical' plays, which were written in the early 1920s. One of these, Metafizyka Dwugłowego Cielęcia (Metaphysics of a Two Headed Calf), is set in New Guinea and Australia.