0030 Józef Czapski – About Learning and Teaching Art

Abstract

The subject of the article is the issues of intellectual and artistic formation. From the extremely rich life and intellectual background of Józef Czapski (1896–1993) – a painter and writer – the author selects the experiences he gained as a co-creator of the Kapiści group, that is a company of students who organised a trip to Paris under the supervision of Professor Józef Pankiewicz and was later transformed into a self-teaching group. Pankiewicz himself subsequently became an important figure for Czapski. Walks in the Louvre organised by Pankiewicz, not only for his students, were recorded by Czapski in a long interview published as a book. There is a likely connection between the Paris experience of the young painter and the situation when years later an émigré to Paris Józef Czapski introduced others into the world of painting, both through his essays and during walks modelled on those that Pankiewicz had invited him to. And it is this moment determining the fact that a student, consciously looking at his master, in his turn becomes a master for others, that forms the subject of these reflections.