Jozef Czapski (1896-1993)

Aliases: Józef Czapski

Professions: Painter

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  Afternoon on the country

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  Czapski Józef Interior with a Table, 1979

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  CZAPSKI Józef/Joseph (Prague 1896 - 1993

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  CZAPSKI, JOSEPH . (Prague 1896 - 1993

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Jozef Czapski Biography

(b prague, 3 april 1896; d paris, 12 jan 1993). polish painter and writer. he intended to be a pianist and then a lawyer, and finally chose an artistic career. a course at the warsaw academy of fine arts was interrupted when he was sent with a military mission to russia in search of missing polish officers (1918). on his return he studied at the academy of fine arts in kraków (1920–24) as a student of józef pankiewicz and then joined the kapists, with whom he went to paris (1924–31). he wrote about the painting of pankiewicz (1936) and cézanne (1937), whose art he particularly admired, and stressed the importance of conscious creation, its intellectual background and the need for direct observation of nature to eliminate random effects. he valued, in opposition to other kapists, modelling with light and shade. his brushwork was always expressive and impulsive; he used vivid, contrasting colours and depicted scenes from unusual angles, as in woodland opera in sopot (1937; warsaw, n. mus.). during world war ii he served in the polish army and was imprisoned in starobielsk; he described these experiences in two volumes of memoirs (1944 and 1949). in 1945 he settled in paris, dedicating himself to writing and painting. his style of painting became increasingly expressionistic as he was drawn towards representing movement and transitory situations, although his subjects remained simple and unembellished: a man at an underground station (e.g. métro pasteur , 1953; warsaw, n. mus.), a sleeping warden in a museum room, the concièrge on a doorstep of a paris house. he found felt-tip pens and watercolours particularly suitable for his later sketches, for example drawings in his diary, in which he recorded the faces of people he met as well as colours and shapes that struck him the most in everyday observation.

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