Józef Czapski: Paintings, Drawings, Journals

Self-portrait in the Mirror, Red Café, Still Life… Most of the paintings by Józef Czapski, held by the National Museum in Kraków, originate from the collection of Barbara and Richard Aeschlimann. In 1976, the Swiss painter, draughtsman and author and Czapski’s friend and broker, opened a gallery in the village of Chexbres on the shore of Lake Geneva, where he and his wife held exhibitions of the artist’s works. In 2016, on the opening of the Józef Czapski Pavilion at the National Museum in Kraków, the Aeschlimanns donated twelve canvases to the museum. Works by the artist who passed away in 1993 are displayed at the exhibition alongside oil paintings, sketches and watercolours donated by other friends of Czapski; we will also see the diaries he kept between 1945 and 1976, adorned with floral motifs.