He had a tumultuous affair with prominent actress Irena Solska[3] who according to Anna Micińska [pl] is represented as the heroine Akne Montecalfi in his first novel, The 622 Downfalls of Bungo or The Demonic Woman, 1911.

In 1914 following a crisis in Witkiewicz's personal life due to the suicide of his fiancée Jadwiga Janczewska, for which he blamed himself, he was invited by Malinowski to act as draftsman and photographer on his anthropological expedition to the then Territory of Papua,[5] by way of Ceylon and Australia.

Of about forty plays written by Witkiewicz between 1918 and 1925, twenty-one survive, and only Jan Maciej Karol Hellcat met with any public success during the author's lifetime.

[16] The film Mystification (2010), written and directed by Jacek Koprowicz proposes, in surrealist fashion, that Witkiewicz faked his own death and lived secretly in Poland until 1968.

Konstanty Puzyna collected his surviving dramatic writings in two volumes in "Dramaty" (Dramas) 1962 which revived interest in his plays in Poland.

The artist and theater director Tadeusz Kantor was inspired by the Cricot group, through which Witkiewicz had presented his final plays in Kraków.

Visual artist Paulina Olowska produced Witkiewicz's The Mother: An Unsavoury Play in Two Acts and an Epilogue at the Tate Modern in 2015.

[21] Films which have Witkiewicz as the subject include Tumor Witkacego 1985,[22] Mystification 2010 [23] and Witkacy and Malinowski: a cinematic séance in 23 scenes 2018.

[24] Films based on his works include Ludiot i kalugericata 1968,[25]Farewell to Autumn 1990,[26] Insatiability 2003,[27]Madame Tutli-Putli 2007[28] and Nursery Rhyme of a Madman 2017.

The Villa Oksza Gallery of 20th century art of the Tatra Museum in Zakopane holds important examples of his photography and pastel drawings.

In the postwar period, People's Republic of Poland's Ministry of Culture decided to exhume Witkiewicz's body, move it to Zakopane, and give it a solemn funeral.