This stunning monograph, a long-overdue critical appraisal of Polish artist Józef Czapski arrives at a moment when the artist's legacy is gaining new recognition. Within these pages, author Eric Karpeles conveys how making art was so enmeshed with Czapski's way of seeing and being in the world that it was second nature. Given that he lived into his ninety-seventh year, it's no surprise that the artist has works dating from every decade of the twentieth century but the first. As witness to the tumultuous events of that century, he found in painting “a refuge and a salvation.”