Witkiewicz witnessed the Russian Revolution while stationing in St Petersburg. His ailing father, a Polish patriot, was deeply grieved by the youngster's decision and died in 1915 without seeing his son again. A happen-stance citizen of the Russian Empire, Witkiewicz went to St Petersburg and was commissioned as an officer in the Imperial army. Following a crisis in Witkiewicz's personal life due to the suicide of his fiancée Jadwiga Janczewska, he was invited by Malinowski to act as draftsman and photographer on a 1914 expedition to Oceania, a venture that was interrupted by the onset of World War I. Witkiewicz was close friends with Karol Szymanowski and, from childhood, with Bronisław Malinowski and Zofia Romer. In accordance with his father's antipathy to the "servitude of the school," the boy was home-schooled and encouraged to develop his talents across a range of creative fields. Witkiewicz was reared at the family home in Zakopane. His godmother was the internationally famous actress Helena Modrzejewska. Both of his parents were born in the Samogitian region of Lithuania. His mother was Maria Pietrzkiewicz Witkiewiczowa. Born in Warsaw, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz was a son of the painter, architect and an art critic Stanisław Witkiewicz.
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