Józef Czapski
Józef Czapski ( born April 3, 1896 in Prague, † January 12, 1993 in Paris) was a Polish writer and painter in the succession of Fauvism and Paul Cézanne.
His commitment was the investigation of war crimes, but also artistic ideas and his own painting. He gave lectures on art and literature in the camp Gryazovets in Starobjelsk in Kharkov, while he was in Soviet captivity. Lectures on Proust, his essay on Marcel Proust was there, dictated in winter 1940/41, and is available in German translation in 2006.
Life
Growing up as the son of the West Prussian noble family Hutten - Czapski in Przyluki (Poland), Czapski lived from 1909 in St. Petersburg, where he passed his A -levels and a law degree began.
In October 1917, he was commanded in a Polish regiment that he left from pacifist convictions after a few months to return to Saint Petersburg. Although Czapski had enrolled in 1918 in Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, but it was his studies interrupted by a mission in which he searched for missing Polish officers in Russia.
At the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, he became in 1921 a pupil of Józef Pankiewicz. Together with fellow students Peter Potworowski he founded in the twenties, the " Paris Committee " ( " Komitet Paryski " ), from which probably explains the name of the group as " Kapisten ". The group turned against Polish painting traditions, but also rejected non-representational art. Models were the painting of Fauvism, Vincent van Gogh and Cézanne.
1924 traveled the Kapisten to Paris and stayed there for six years instead of the scheduled six weeks. Czapski recovered in 1926 in London by a typhus disease and found time for the reading of Proust's great novel work on the search for the lost time. In 1930 he traveled to Spain. The Kapisten had the late 20s and early 30s a number of successful exhibitions.
1939 Czapski was named after the Polish campaign with his regiment commanded to the Eastern Front and became the end of September eighteen months in Soviet captivity. In his prison camp about 400 officers were interned who survived - as opposed to the 15,000 victims of the Katyn massacre. He tried to keep mentally upright despite the cold, hunger and disease through a diary and recorded his paintings from memory after. The prisoners had to perform forced labor. Some prisoners organized lectures on topics from various fields of knowledge. Czapski spoke about Polish painting, Proust and Delacroix.
After the German invasion of the Soviet Union and the Sikorski - Maisky Agreement Czapski in 1941 entered into a Tozk in the Anders Army and was instructed to search for the lost 15,000 officers. The following year he accompanied in an organizational function a division of the army to the Persian corridor through Iran, Iraq to Palestine, Egypt and Italy.
In 1945 he was re- settled in Paris. In 1947 he was co-founder of the journal " Kultura ". This was followed by exhibitions, book publications, lecture tours and awards. In 1990 he was awarded the Jan- Cybis price. In 1993 he died at the age of 96 years in Paris.
Exhibitions
Literary works
- Wspomnienia Starobielski, Rome 1945.
- Inhuman earth, Cologne and Berlin in 1967.
- Le turmoil et le Spectre, Paris 1981.
- Proust - lectures in the camp Gryazovets, Berlin, 2006.