Tadeusz Makowski was a Polish painter who moved to France in 1908 where he painted The Pipe Smokers in 1931. He was influenced by the Cubism developed by Braque and Picasso and this is in evidence in the current painting of four men sitting round a table.
The figures are blocky, squat and square with recognisable facial features. We have a window into a personal version of a Cubist or Surrealist world, and there is a tension between the demand to paint the world as we see it and the intention of the artist to impose his artistic vision upon it.
Tadeusz Makowski’s The Pipe Smokers (or Palacze fajek in Polish) is in the National Museum in Wrocław, Poland.