Otwartość zamkniętych przestrzeni w malarstwie Józefa Czapskiego
Openness of Closed Spaces in Józef Czapski’s Paintings

Summary/Abstract: The article refers to the problematics of tension between closure and openness in Józef Czapski’s paintings. The paintings seem limited, closed in two-dimensional canvas, paper, cardboard... This is, however, an apparent closure. An analysis of the creative attitude of the painter, theoretician of painting and writer Józef Czapski was used to illustrate what transgressing material limitations – “opening up closed spaces” – involves. From the artist’s perspective, this “opening” means being sensitive to nature as a source of authentic creative visions and the ability to search for meta-physical justifications for one’s own work. Czapski’s creative attitude was confronted here with the views of Simone Weil, a thinker important for Czapski, and also with the concepts of the painter and writer Henryk Waniek and the critic Tomasz Burek. The “opening up” of the pictorial spaces also takes place from the perspective of the viewer/spectator, who investigates the individual works, as well as examines the relationships between certain images.

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