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\u201cFriday. I only wrote on the cover of this new notebook: memento! Because here I wasn\u2019t talking only about memento Mori, but about memento Vitae, which still awaits me, whether this life will last a day or a few years!\u201d \u2013 wrote 91-year-old J\u00f3zef Czapski in one of his last diaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The exhibition Memento vitae is the first presentation of the entire collection of Czapski\u2019s paintings in the collections of the National Museum in Krakow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This collection currently includes (as at the end of December 2023) 27 oil paintings and 2 oil sketches for paintings. It was created mainly thanks to gifts and individual purchases. Already in 1958, thanks to the efforts of the legendary curator of the Museum, Helena Blum, was purchased directly from the author Red Caf\u00e9 (1956), in 1960 Altar Boys (1955), and in 1967 Old Woman \u2013 Femme Forte (1965). In 1991, thanks to Tadeusz Nyczek, the National Museum in Krakow purchased Woman in the Window (1977) from the collection of Katarzyna and Zbigniew Herbert, and in 2021\u20132022 Couple (undated) and Young Men on the Beach in Dinard (1970) from Renata and Marek Szypulski.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Czapski\u2019s paintings from their collections were donated to the NMK by El\u017cbieta Colin-\u0141ubie\u0144ska, Barbara and Richard Aeschlimann, Adela Maria \u017bele\u0144ska n\u00e9e Bohomolec and W\u0142adys\u0142aw \u017bele\u0144ski, the \u0141ubie\u0144ska sisters \u2013 R\u00f3\u017ca (artistic pseudonym Rula Lenska), Gabriela \u0141ubie\u0144ska-Steele and Anna, Lady Frances Phipps, Krystyna Zachwatowicz-Wajda and Andrzej Wajda, Renata and Marek Szypulski and the Polish Humanitarian Fund (Fonds Humanitaire Polonais) in Lailly-en-Val in France.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The earliest painting in our collection is Patrycja Newey in \u201cTosca\u201d (1953); the latest ones come from the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the artist was already \u2013 as he wrote in his diaries \u2013 \u201calmost completely blind\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
J\u00f3zef Czapski, although he drew from French painting and was forced to live and create in exile, saw his painting primarily in Poland, against the background of Polish painting. Towards the end of his life, he thought about the meaning of his work and what would remain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo what did our Kapist wave and me in particular bring? Torment by pure painting. What does it mean? [\u2026]<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maybe my testament is just a painting will to raise the level of PAINTING QUALIT\u00c9 at least by a small level in Poland, where my painting is only known. [\u2026] Whether any of this will come into being or whether it will be swallowed up by the new end of the world is none of my business!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
curator: Agnieszka Kosi\u0144ska<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fragments from J\u00f3zef Czapski\u2019s diary no. 240, dated November\u2013December 1987, titled Memento, and from diary no. 255, dated 27 November\u201320 December, 1988 (Archive of J\u00f3zef and Maria Czapski in the National Museum in Krakow). Reading and transcription: Maria and Janusz S. Nowak. Underscoring and distinctions: J\u00f3zef Czapski. Quotes from J\u00f3zef Czapski\u2019s diary. Copyright \u00a9 by Weronika Orkisz<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"J\u00f3zef](\"https:\/\/new.mnk.pl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/MNK-pieciu.jpg\")
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