The 20th-Century Art and Life of Józef Czapski By Eric Karpeles - 2018

My Post on Lost Times - Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp by Józef Czapski

An Autodidactic Corner Work

Last month I was so fortunate to be given a review copy of Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp by Józef Czapski, translated and introduced by Eric Karpeles.  

It was wonderful to be able to follow up this month with the forthcoming The 20th-Century Art and Life of Józef Czapski  By Eric Karpeles.  

Józef Czapski

Born April 3, 1896 in Prague into an aristocratic  Polish family

Dies January 12, 1993 in Maisions-Laffitte, France

He was an author, critic and painter

1917 he moved to Poland

1924 moves to Paris

1932 returns to Poland

1939 - while serving as an officer in Polish Army he was captured by Russians and sent to a Gulag prison camp.   He and his fellow officers, in order to keep up morale and promote unity began to give lectures to fellow prisoners.  Czapski knew Proust and French literature intimately, working purely from memories he gave a series of lectures on In Search of Lost Times.  

1945 he returns to Paris and becomes involved in a circle of Polish artists and mingles with French Cultural luminaries.

He remains a resident of Paris from then on

(Drawn from Eric Karpeles)

This book is highly edifying, especially for me given the weak state of my knowledge of 20th century visual arts.  Karpeles is himself a painter and from him I have gained at least a little insight into how to approach paintings.

There really is too much in this great book to attempt any kind of summing up of the long rich life of Czapski, painter, Polish patriot, cultural historian, central figure in Polish cultural life in Paris, great friend and family member.  It was fascinating to follow Karpeles as he learned more about his subject, meeting those who knew him, encountering his art work, reading his books, becoming so knowledgeable on this wonderful man.  

It made me feel rewarded to learn a man like this walked the earth during my life time.  He was deeply into French and Polish Literature, especially Proust.

I give my thanks to Eric Karpeles for teaching me so much.

A Fellow of the Czeslaw Milosz Institute at the Claremont Colleges, Eric Karpeles has given the Amon Carter Lecture on the Arts at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, worked as a volunteer ambulance driver, spoken on Proust at Berkeley and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, walked from Bath to Oxford, interviewed composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim onstage, and collaborated on a book of mathematical equations and Hebrew references used as a prop in a film by the Coen Brothers.

Karpeles studied at the Art Students League of New York as a boy and was awarded a residency at the Cité des Arts in Paris as a young man. A voracious reader whose idea of hell is being on public transportation without a book, he likes to cook, or, perhaps more tellingly, he likes to eat. He once had tea with Indira Gandhi and has lived with the same man for forty years.  

From https://www.erickarpeles.com

I was kindly given a review copy of this book.

Mel u