Between 1910 and 1915 he studied philosophy, architecture and agronomy in Vienna. He never studied painting; he had a spontaneous talent trained at home by his father. Between 1917 and 1939 he lived in Zakopane, where he belonged to the local artistic and intellectual elite centred around Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz and Karol Szymanowski. He was a member of the Podhale Art Society, the Rhythm Association of Polish Artists, cooperated in the Portrait Company with Witkacy, and ran the Landscape Company himself. He was active as a mountaineer and promoter of the Tatra Mountains and skiing; he published books: "Narkotyk gor" ("The Narcotic of the Mountains") (1928), "Tatry i Podhale" ("The Tatras and Podhale") (1935).

In the interwar period, Malczewski was a painter highly regarded and awarded at home and abroad. He first exhibited his works, together with Witkacy, in 1924 at Czesław Garliński's Salon in Warsaw. He took part in numerous exhibitions at home and in presentations of Polish art abroad, organised by the Society for the Propagation of Polish Art Among Foreigners and in international exhibitions in Prague and Helsinki (1929), Vienna (1928), Paris (1928, 1937), Brussels and the Hague (1929), Budapest and Copenhagen (1930), Venice (13th Biennale), Los Angeles (1932), Moscow, Edinburgh, San Francisco, New York (1933). He also exhibited with the Rhythm Artists' Association, of which he had been a member since 1932. In 1933, he received an art prize from the town of Zakopane for his painting Morskie Oko. When he won the gold medal at the Olympic exhibition in Berlin in 1936, he was offered the opportunity to purchase a series of 60 paintings. The artist was awarded the gold medal at the International Exhibition of Art and Technology in Paris in 1937 and the golden laurel of the Polish Academy of Literature in 1937 for his works.

At first, Rafał Malczewski's painting was described as surrealist, primitivist, then, with the artist's new explorations, people wrote of a kind of realism, only to admit that Malczewski had embarked on a path that was very distinct, interesting and, in its own way, close to the later works of the German Expressionists. On the one hand, the painter explored the landscape of the mountains in his work and was an unquestionable master of this motif; on the other hand, he discovered the industrial landscape on his travels to Silesia, which in his depiction, imbued with melancholy, became a separate genre in Polish painting and was called - industrial magical landscape. Both the snow-white landscapes of the Tatra Mountains and the industrial, black Silesia, depicted by Malczewski in a style imbued with an atmosphere of strange emptiness and nostalgia, belonged to metaphysical painting.

On the one hand, the artist did not abandon the realistic method of depiction, while on the other hand, formal simplification caused the landscape or interior depicted to become an almost abstract vision giving the uncanny, surprising impression of being unreal and real at the same time. These features of Malczewski's works allow him to be associated with the current of magic realism popular in the 1920s in Germany. The Silesian railway stations, steam locomotives and wagons standing on the platform, which the artist introduced into his painting, returned to him in the post-war stage of his life in exile in Canada.

The war took the artist out of his context and condemned him to wander. Through France, Portugal, Brazil, where he spent two years, and the United States, Malczewski and his wife arrived in Canada in November 1942. Thanks to the intercession of Wiktor Podoski, MP for the Republic of Poland in Ottawa, the artist received a commission from the Canadian National Railways and Canadian Pacific Railways, under which, between 1943 and 1946, he travelled across Canada by train, painting landscapes and small stations. CNR prepared exhibitions of Malczewski's work in Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and Winnipeg, called -Canadian Vision‖, as well as using the works to decorate the interiors of carriages and stations and for advertising.

The year 1943 brought the artist two solo exhibitions in Ottawa, where he showed oils created in Brazil and Canadian watercolours, which were positively received by Canadian art reviewers ('The Ottawa Citizen', 'The Gazette'). In 1944, Malczewski had an exhibition at the Concoran Gallery in Washington. In 1945, the painter participated in a group exhibition of Canadian Art at the Grand Central Gallery in New York, had a solo exhibition at the Parizeau Gallery in Montreal and his work was shown at the Polish Exhibition at the Detroit Institute of Art.

Malczewski wrote columns for the London "News" and for Radio Free Europe, and was active at the Polish Scientific Institute in Montreal giving talks on art, on the work of his father, Jacek Malczewski, and on his childhood memories, but all these activities did not provide the artist with a livelihood. Working with Montreal's highly regarded Dominion Gallery, run by Max Stern, was prestigious for the artist, but successful vernissages and good reviews in the press did not translate into sales of paintings. He left for New York in the hope that life would be easier there, but returned to Montreal at the end of 1950. He was in a bad nervous state and began to lose his sight.

On Jan Lechoń's initiative, an evening of Rafał Malczewski's friendship was organised in New York, and the money raised allowed him to function for a while. In 1955, the artist joined the Polish Decorative Club, founded in Montreal. In March 1956, he suffered a stroke and paralysis of his left hand, which he painted with. He slowly recovered and learned to paint with his right hand. The watercolours created after the stroke, only lightly touched with watered-down paint, are maintained in Malczewski's characteristic realistic painting with features of formal simplification.

In Toronto, an evening dedicated to the work of Raphael Malczewski was held with a draw for his paintings, the proceeds of which were donated to help the ailing artist. Also in Montreal, at the Polish Scientific Institute, an evening was organised entitled 'Malczewski - father and son', the proceeds of which were donated to the artist. In June 1959, an exhibition of Malczewski's watercolours was organised in Vancouver. In the same year, at the expense of the consulate general in Montreal and the Polish government, the artist travelled to Poland, where the National Museum in Warsaw was planning an exhibition of his works. The artist did not agree to the exhibition, and submitted two book manuscripts to the publisher - 'Navel of the World. Memories of Zakopane' (published in Czytelnik in 1960) and 'Late Autumn' (only published in London in 1964). The Malczewski family did not accept the offer to stay in the country. They returned to Canada in September 1959. The artist described his frustrations with the journey to his homeland in the texts 'Kulawca's Journey to Poland' and 'Z notatnika. Memories of his stay in Poland in the summer of 1959".

In 1962. "Kultura" of Paris awarded Malczewski an annual prize for his work as a painter. In 1964, the Dominion Gallery in Montreal held the last exhibition of Malczewski's work during his lifetime: "Mostly watercolours, poetic and delicate, with snow or autumn colours, they present Canadian landscapes and mountains. They are painted exquisitely" ("The Gazette"). The artist was not present at the opening. He died in February 1965. In November, the Montreal PIN prepared an evening in memory of Rafal Malczewski. Aleksander Janta gave an essay entitled "Rafal, whom we do not know", slides of Malczewski's paintings were displayed. Many watercolours, painted during the Canadian stage of his life, are scattered in Polish homes in Montreal, across Canada and in the United States (their number is estimated at around 1000 according to D. Folga-Januszewska). Malczewski's works are in the collections of the Governor General of Canada, the family of President Eisenhower, the National Gallery in Washington D.C., the Canadian National Railway collection. A large collection of the artist's interwar works is held by the National Museum in Warsaw and the Jacek Malczewski Museum in Radom.

Work in catalogue
Rafał Malczewski, 'Eastern Townships', 1955, watercolour, inscription at lower right: [Zofia and Rafał Malczewski, To the Beloved Solenizant Stanisław Petrusewicz Rafał Malczewski, Montreal 8 May 1955], 58.5 x 40.5 cm, in the collection of Halina Babinska in Montreal. A landscape of the sub-Montreal province of the Eastern Townships: empty fields with a rectangle of black soil, blue mountains in the distance, leafless trees and bushes with delicately outlined branches. All in tones of brown, purple and blue. Typical of Rafał Malczewski's simplification of the landscape. The horizontal lines of the fields, the empty space and the gently waving mountains in the distance - a clear composition evoking the illusion of depth, remoteness, and the tranquillity of nature in its winter sleep.