Discover the Best Books Written by Jozef Czapski

Józef Czapski (3 April 1896 – 12 January 1993) was a Polish artist, author, and critic and an officer of the Polish Army. As a painter, he is notable for his membership in the Kapist movement, which Cézanne heavily influenced. Following the Polish Defensive War, he was made a prisoner of war by the Soviets and was among the very few officers to survive the Katyn massacre of 1940. 

Following the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement, he was an official envoy of the Polish government searching for the missing Polish officers in Russia. After World War II, he remained in exile in the Paris suburb of Maisons-Laffitte, where he was among the founders of Kultura monthly, one of the most influential Polish cultural journals of the 20th century.

Józef Marian Franciszek Arabia Hutten-Czapski of Leliwa, as was his full name, was born on 3 April 1896 in Prague to an aristocratic family. Among his relatives was hr. Emeryk Hutten-Czapski, hr. Karol Hutten-Czapski , hr. Emeryk August Hutten-Czapski, his sister Maria Czapska, as well as Georgy Chicherin. Czapski spent most of his childhood in his family's manor of Przyłuki near Minsk. In 1915 he graduated from a gymnasium in St. Petersburg and joined the cadet corps. 

Czapski graduated from the law faculty of the University of Saint Petersburg, and in 1917 both joined and later resigned from the 1st Krechowce Uhlan Regiment, a Polish cavalry unit formed in Russia as part of the Polish I Corps. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, he moved to newly-renascent Poland and, in 1918, entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. There he started his studies in the class of Stanisław Lentz. However, already in 1920, he quit the academy and volunteered for the Polish Army.

An ardent pacifist, Czapski asked for any service that would not involve active struggle. His plea was accepted, and he was sent to Russia to find the whereabouts of the officers of Czapski's former regiment, taken captive by the Bolsheviks during the course of the Russian Civil War. He reached St. Petersburg, where he met, among others, Dmitry Filosofov, Zinaida Gippius, Aleksey Remizov, and Dmitry Merezhkovsky, who later became his long-time friend.

His mission was concluded when he learned that the Bolsheviks had executed the officers. Under Merezhkovsky's influence, Czapski gave up his pacifist ideals and, upon his return to Poland, joined the ranks of the Polish Army and fought as an NCO in the crew of one of the armored trains on the fronts of the Polish-Soviet War. He was awarded the Virtuti Militari, the highest Polish military decoration, for his merits.