Jozef Czapski, THREE POSTS ON THE SEA

16.0 x 23.2cm - watercolor, marker, collage, paper About the importance of drawing in the work of Jozef Czapski, wrote Wojciech Zmorzyński: A couple in a cafe, a lonely man at a subway station, a woman in church - seen and instantly noted on the pages of a sketchbook. He noted hotly, almost reporter-like, capturing sudden dazzles in a still frame, giving them the mark of permanence. He used markers, crayons, pencils, seemingly anything he had at hand (...). For Czapski, drawing was not just an exercise of his hand, but first and foremost a way of recording his first vision, the beginning of a mental process leading through deepening experience to oil painting. Drawing was the starting point for work in oil, and often included written information about the colors of the painting (W. Zmorzyński, Seeing Life, cat. exhib., MN Gdansk 2000, p. 9).

♣ to the auctioned price, in addition to other costs, will be added a fee resulting from 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).