Józef Czapski (1896-1993) was an eminent Polish painter, writer, art critic and publicist whose life and work reflected the turbulent events of the 20th century. He was also a soldier who participated in both the First World War, the battles of 1919-1920, and walked the trail of the Second World War, but also a pacifist who did not want to fight.

He was born in Prague on 2 or 3 April 1896, to an aristocratic family. His actual name was Józef Maria Franciszek Hutten-Czapski. His father Jerzy Hutten-Czapski (1861-1930) was a Polish count, landowner, social and political activist. He descended from the wealthiest branch of the Czapski family, which owned vast latifundia in the vicinity of Minsk Litewski and in Volhynia, inherited from the Radziwills. His mother was Countess Józefa Thun-Hohenstein (1867-1903), daughter of the Austro-Hungarian politician and diplomat Fryderyk Franciszek Józef Thun-Hohenstein, born and died in Cieszyn, during whose career he was ambassador in Stockholm and St Petersburg, among other places. After leaving the diplomatic service, Friedrich Franz settled in Prague.

Although Józef Czapski was born in Prague, he spent his childhood on his family estate in Przyłuki (now Belarus). From an early age, he received a thorough education, including artistic training. Even before the First World War, he began studying law at St Petersburg University, probably not so much out of a love of law, however, as in the hope of avoiding conscription into the army. However, as early as 1917, he interrupted these studies and enlisted in the 1st Krechowiec Cavalry Regiment. On the other hand, deeply influenced by Leo Tolstoy's pacifism and conception, he left the army, enrolled at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in 1918 and, above all, founded a pacifist commune with Antoni Marylski. He later found his way to St Petersburg on a mission to find captured Polish officers who, it turned out, had been murdered. There, however, he met Dmitri Merezhkovsky, a Russian writer and thinker known for his unique approach to philosophy, which combined elements of mysticism, historicism and a deep interest in spirituality and religion. Merezhkovsky believed that history was an arena in which a spiritual struggle between good and evil, between spiritual and material forces, was played out. His philosophy, firmly rooted in the Russian intellectual and cultural tradition, often focused on the search for the spiritual meaning of history and culture. In his works, he often referred to historical figures and events to illustrate these ideas. This concept inspired the young Czapski, and was a way out of the impasse between the passivity of pacifism and the need to become embroiled in the whirlwind of events.

Between 1919 and 1920, Czapski served on the armoured train "Bold". He took part in the Kyiv expedition. He was decorated with the Virtuti Militari Cross. After the end of hostilities, he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, and in 1923 co-founded the Kapist painting group. Artists who, partly under the influence of Jozef Pankiewicz, were fascinated by the problem of colour and referred to the tradition of French Post-Impressionism and dreamed of going to France... This path led him to Paris. There he became - as the one who knew French best - the guardian of the group, and he also met many prominent personalities, including for a time renting a flat from Sergei Nabokov, with whom he began an affair. He returned to Poland in 1932 already as a recognised artist. The following years brought exhibitions not only in Poland, but also at the International Art Exhibition in Pittsburgh.

His work as a painter, especially that of the post-war period, is on the one hand deeply analytical, which is evident in his still lifes and portraits, among others. Mystical still frames that are an analysis of colour, shape and light. And on the other hand, almost grotesquely exaggerated scenes taken from everyday life. Sometimes mute, impressionistically immersed in the flash of the gaze. Yet these are not caricatures or random scenes. They seem to penetrate the everyday, often reaching for details, small fragments, snippets of reality, which in effect also seem to transcend the ordinariness of the world. Czapski is able to penetrate reality to its guts, to penetrate into it, leaving us in a kind of anxiety towards what we see and what we experience. He has experienced enough to also confront ugliness in his work, a world that is not only a study of colour and form, but also a dramatic stage. This ugliness of his does not mock or ironise, rather it is an attempt to capture what we try to hide under the everyday glitter. His work still seems to echo Merezhkovsky's ideas, the idea that the future of humanity depends on a synthesis of spirituality and rationalism. Perhaps only not in the fusion of science and religion, but precisely in art seeing this role. An art that becomes a way to penetrate deeper, spiritual truths that escape casual vision, but which religion is also unable to reveal to modern man. This search for a universal experience seems to permeate his work.

After the outbreak of the Second World War, he was taken prisoner of war and interned in Starobelsk and then in further camps. He was released in 1941 after the signing of the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement. He then became head of the office for the search for officers and soldiers missing in Russia. He then became head of the Propaganda and Information Department at the Polish Army Staff. He was one of the last to leave Russia, and wartime fortunes threw him through Iraq, Palestine, Egypt to Italy and then to Paris. There in 1947, among other things, he wrote for the first issue of Kultura, still published in Rome. He would be associated with the editorship of Kultura, later to become Parisian, for years. In 1944, his Memoirs of Starobiel were also published. In 1951, his first post-war exhibition took place. In the following years, he exhibited in Paris, London, Toronto and Geneva, among others.

Czapski studied painting in Krakow, Warsaw and Paris, where he came into contact with the avant-garde artistic movements of the period. His early works were characterised by experimentation with different styles and techniques. In Poland, his works were still shown in the 1950s in Krakow and Poznan, and in 1986 at the Archdiocesan Museum in Warsaw. However, it was only after the political changes that he was shown in the country's major museum institutions. In the 1980s, the Znak publishing house published a collection of his essays, "Patrząc", and in 1986 "Dzienniki, wspomnienia, relacje" were published. He was nominated Honorary Professor of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. On 12 January 1993, he died in Maisons-Laffitte and was buried in the Mesnil-le-Roi cemetery, next to his sister Maria, a prominent literary scholar.

On 21 December 2021 in Prague, a bronze plaque dedicated to Józef Czapski was unveiled on the façade of the Thun-Hohenstein Palace. The commemoration project was realised in cooperation between the POLONIKA Institute and the Polish Institute in Prague. The author of the plaque is Czech sculptor Paulina Skavova. During the unveiling of the plaque, POLLONIKA Institute Director Dorota Janiszewska-Jakubiak emphasised that Czapski's life and the history of his family illustrate the fate of Central Europe.