In the late afternoon, after ingesting peyote, a girl manifests in front of him. She has “incredible sweetness and beauty,” but the young artist watches her melt into “sloughing, bubbled horror” before his eyes. He keeps meticulous notes of his encounters with gorgeous, rotting women. 

He maintains this drug-induced ugliness for himself, too. In a self-portrait, Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz imagines an apocalypse behind him — yellow skies darkened by black smoke sprawling towards the heavens. Grey Industrial plants roar on in the background, billowing plumes of smoke. War and death seem imminent. The landscape appears to be melting. Yet, he stares forward in a blue suit — unbothered, stoic, almost tranquil. 

What gave the Polish avant-garde painter’s work such an otherworldly, dystopian tinge? One answer is psychedelics, which became an integral part of the painter’s process. Another answer could be the onslaught of war ravaging Eastern Europe, brought into sharp relief by the painter’s consumption of psychedelic drugs. We see the world through his eyes — beautiful, terrifying, yet strangely sentimental.  

Witkiewicz — known as Witkacy — was born in 1885 in Warsaw, during a precarious time in Poland’s history. During his life, he was known as an eccentric — a lively addition to dinner parties and at times, a melancholic. During the Stalin regime, Witkacy’s work was lost, only to be rediscovered and celebrated after Poland’s liberalization in 1956. Today, Witkacy is known as a beloved Polish writer and artist, a life that was cut regrettably short when he committed suicide on September 18, 1939, upon hearing the news that the Soviet army invaded Poland. 

Upgrade to read the rest of this story.