Pittore, disegnatore scientifico, fotografo, commediografo, filosofo, critico letterario e romanziere, il polacco Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz è una delle figure più interessanti del panorama culturale europeo nel periodo compreso tra le due guerre ed è noto in Italia come soprattutto agli studiosi di teatro. Vivendo volutamente ai margini delle avanguardie, ha tentato un'impresa assai ardua: creare un unico sistema concettuale che potesse fungere da paradigma sia per la sua filosofia, sia per le sue teorie teatrali ed estetiche. 'La ditta dei ritratti' è un manifesto promozionale della sua attività di pittore da leggere come un vero e proprio trattato di estetica.

This novel, the author's masterpiece, is one of the greatest expressions ever of the tortured intersection of political and personal destinies in Eastern Europe. Futuristic, experimental, and remarkably prophetic, the book traces the adventures of a young Pole whose own fate parallels the collapse of Western civilization following a Chinese communist invasion from the East.
Written in 1927, Witkiewicz's novel presages the horrifying anti-utopian society that would become a reality for millions of Eastern Europeans in the late 1930s. Insatiability succeeds in conveying the catastrophic mood of that time - its malaise, its desires, its terrifying glimpse of the future.

Edited and translated by Daniel Gerould and C.S. Durer, foreword by Jan Kott. Painter, playwrights, novelist, aesthetician, philosopher, and expert on drugs, Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz - or Witkacy, as he called himself - remains Poland's outstanding figure in the arts between the two world wars. This volume brings together three of Witkiewicz's best works for the stage as well as a selection from his critical writing. The plays deal with the author's principal themes and obsessions: the dilemma of the artist in the twentieth century; the revolutions in science and politics; and the bankruptcy of all ideology, the decline of western civilization, and the coming of totalitarianism. Yet, far from being solemn or even serious in tone, these apocalyptic dramas are permeated with grotesque humor and characterized by a wild theatricality that particularly appeals to contemporary sensibility.