Joseph Czapski (1896-1993)Technique: Oil on board.Measures: 26.5 x 21 cmTitle: LandscapeSigned: lower right edgeProvenance: Private CollectionBiography:Józef Czapski (Prague, April 3, 1896 – Maisons-Laffitte, France, January 12, 1993) was a painter, distantly influenced by Cézanne, a writer and occasional soldier during both world wars, and one of the great witnesses of history. of the 20th century in its most tragic aspect.Born into a family of Polish aristocracy, he spent his childhood in Belarus and studied law and fine arts. As a painter, he was the main animator of the Kapista movement, made up of students who reacted against classical Polish painting and who exhibited in Paris between 1924 and 1933.He was one of the few officers in the Polish army who was able to escape the Katyn massacre in 1940, but he was immediately taken prisoner.In his autobiographical story On an Inhuman Land (1949), he narrates the author's years of captivity in Soviet prisons and his later role, as an officer in the Polish army, in the search for the thousands of Polish prisoners scattered throughout the different gulags of the Union. Soviet Union and of which barely 395 survived.After the war, he joined the Polish community who had emigrated to France, where he worked as a political columnist, editor and author of art and literature criticism. He was the founder of the magazine Kultura. He and his sister, the writer Maria Czapska, lived and worked at Maisons-Laffitte.In recognition of his importance as a Polish writer, painter and patriot, in 2016 the Polish state dedicated a permanent pavilion to him in the museum park of his grandfather, the renowned coin collector Emeryk Hutten-Czapski. The pavilion in Krakow was designed by Krystyna Zachwatowicz and her husband, film director Andrzej Wajda.

This is in very good condition with age appropriate wear.