Józef Czapski, BILARDS, 1983

53.0 x 64.0cm - oil, canvas signed p.d.: J.C. 83.



Image exhibited, described and reproduced:

- Józef Czapski seeing life (exhibition catalog edited by Wojciech Zmorzyński), National Museum in Gdansk, Gdansk III - VI 2000, p. 91, color ill. 58, cat. no. 55.



Czapski's painterly eye, fascinated by everyday semblance, knows how to pierce that semblance to the core. His method resembles the approach of a photographer strolling around the world with a camera slung over his shoulder. He does not lurk for an image; on the contrary, one or another slice of reality suddenly imposes itself on him, transforming his passive gaze into an instant vision. (...). It is the painter's delighted respect for raw, material reality, for the apparent banality, that underlies the privileged moment that reconciles the viewer of Czapski's painting with the world as it is.

Konstanty A. Jeleński, The Eye and Time, 1974 [in:] Józef Czapski. Around the Aeschlimann Collection, Zacheta 2007

♣ a fee will be added to the auctioned price, in addition to other costs, based on the right of the artist and his heirs to receive remuneration in accordance with the Act of February 4, 1994 - on Copyright and Related Rights (droit de suite).

Jozef Czapski (Prague 1896 - Paris 1993) - painter, draughtsman, writer and publicist; initially studied law, then in 1918 trained at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts. He interrupted his studies to go to Russia to search for missing Polish officers, at the behest of Polish military authorities.

In 1920 he participated in the Polish-Bolshevik war. In 1923-1924 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. In 1924, together with a group of students of Jozef Pankiewicz, forming the so-called Paris Committee, he went to Paris for further studies, where he stayed until 1931. After returning to Poland, he participated in exhibitions of the Capists, including at the Warsaw Institute of Art Propaganda. A participant in the September campaign, a prisoner of, among others, the Starobielsk camp; freed from captivity, he joined the Anders Army and in 1941-1942 led the search for officers and soldiers imprisoned and missing in the USSR.

After 1944, he lived permanently in Maisons-Laffitte near Paris. He was one of the founders of the monthly magazine "Culture." As a writer, he published, among others, Oldobiel Memories, On Inhuman Earth and numerous essays on art. He painted landscapes, still lifes, interiors and, less frequently, portraits. In the 1980s and 1990s, the artist's paintings and drawings were exhibited several times in Krakow, Warsaw, and Poznan.

His painting - initially close to the Pankiewicz school, later very individual and expressive - is more widely presented in an album by Joanna Pollakówna (Czapski, Warsaw 1993).