Leon Chwistek Akt kobiecy 1919, russian painting

Leon Chwistek (1884–1944) Polish avant-garde painter, theoretician of modern art, literary critic, logician, philosopher and mathematician. His father was a doctor and his mother a pianist. He spent his youth in the pleasant town of the Tatras (where he formed a close friendship with Witkiewicz, with whom he conducted throughout his life a lively debate on philosophical and artistic matters). He attended school and university in Kraków, where he studied mathematics and philosophy at the Jagiellonian University and at the same time attended the Academy of Fine Arts. When he was awarded his doctorate in 1906, he took up teaching at the Sobieski Gymnasium where he himself had been a pupil, and at the same time conducted research under the guidance of W. Heinrich. Having been granted a scholarship, he went abroad to study logic and mathematics, and attended the lectures of Gilbert and Poincaré (at the University of Ghent, 1909). The result of this period of study was his first work, dedicated to the principle of non-contradiction and inspired by the works of Russell, Fechner, and Whitehead.