The National Museum in Krakow presents in the Józef Czapski Pavilion the early works of the Kapists – members of the group formed in 1923 around Józef Pankiewicz, professor of the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts. The influence of the French masters Cézanne and Bonnard is clearly visible in them.

Although the group was founded for a utilitarian purpose (going to study in Paris), over time, the general assumptions of its “painting concept” were created, mainly thanks to Jan Cybis. The fundamental issue was colour, which should build the shape and space in the painting. The Kapists used the concept of “colour games” formulated by Pankiewicz, and Józef Czapski explained it as follows: “A smooth surface becomes darker when combined with a lighter spot, lighter when combined with a dark spot, a grey surface becomes green when combined with a red spot, etc”.

They painted almost exclusively from nature. Since content was not an important element for them, the subject matter of their works is limited to landscape and still life, rarely portrait. Only Zygmunt Waliszewski – the wunderkind among the Kapists – presented the relationships between the painted figures in an often grotesque, dynamic way, and the subject matter was of great importance to him. The exhibition highlights two of his double-sided paintings, including a huge, for a Kapist work, winter view of a town, on the reverse of which is a Renaissance feast – one of the painter’s favourite themes in the early 1930s. Józef Czapski's early paintings can be compared with his mature works, presented in the biographical room on the second floor of the Pavilion.

(Curators: Agnieszka Kosińska, Światosław Lenartowicz. Coordinator: Ewa Kalita-Garstka)