Leon Chwistek

Leon Chwistek lived from June 13, 1884, born in Kraków, to August 20, 1944, when he died near Moscow, and was a Polish philosopher, logician and avant-garde painter. In philosophy and mathematical logic he worked on the philosophy of science, developing a theory that reality cannot be captured by one unified formal system and arguing instead for the existence of several distinct realities, and he demonstrated inconsistencies in existing axiomatic systems of his day. Alongside Jan Lukasiewicz he helped pioneer Polish notation in logic. As a painter and theorist of Polish Formism he carried his multiple realities theory into art, matching four types of reality, popular, physical, phenomenal and visionary, to the painting styles of Primitivism, Realism, Impressionism and Futurism respectively. He was a founding member of the Polish Mathematical Society and held the professorship of logic at the University of Lwow.