Józef Czapski
First and last name
Józef Czapski
Date of birth
1896, Prague
Date of death
1993, Le Mesnil-le-Roi
Józef Czapski, coat-of-arms Leliwa (born Count Hutten-Czapski) was a Polish painter and writer, and a major in the Polish Army. He received his artistic education at Warsaw's School of Fine Arts in the class of Stanisław Lentz and, after the Bolshevik War, at Kraków's Academy of Fine Arts. There, his teachers included Wojciech Weiss and Józef Pankiewicz. In 1924, together with other students of Pankiewicz, he co-founded the Paris Committee in the French capital. On his return to Poland, he exhibited with the Kapists and began to be active as a critic. In 1937, he published a monograph on Pankiewicz's work. Among Czapski's paintings, the poignant self-portraits attract particular attention.