Beksiński. BoSzArt Malarstwo / Painting Series

Beksiński. BoSzArt Malarstwo / Painting Series

This mini-album showcases a selection of the most important paintings by Zdzisław Beksiński, one of the most original and influential Polish painters of the twentieth century. Beksiński was a multifaceted artist, who practiced photography, drawing, graphic art, computer graphics, sculpture, and most notably, painting. His fantastic, visionary, and apocalyptic visions have created a style that is immediately recognizable and uniquely his own. Beksiński's works are featured in museums and private collections both in Poland and abroad. However, the largest collection, comprising several thousand works and the entire archive of the artist, belongs to the Historical Museum in Sanok. The images featured in this album come from this extensive collection, offering a comprehensive glimpse into the genius of Beksiński's artistic journey. This album not only highlights Beksiński's most iconic paintings but also provides insight into his diverse artistic talents and the visionary themes that permeate his work. Each piece reflects Beksiński's extraordinary imagination and his ability to transform his apocalyptic visions into compelling art that continues to captivate audiences worldwide. Decay and Darkness During his long career Zdzislaw Beksinski worked in many fields of art: sculpture, photography, graphic art, drawing, and last but not least, painting. All of Beksinski s paintings are untitled he wanted to avoid any metaphorical interpretation of his paintings. As an artist, Beksinski was fascinated with death, decay and darkness. But those weren t his only fascinations. He was also known his interest in eroticism, abstractionism and Eastern mysticism. From the mid-60s onwards, he was very popular in Poland. In the 80s and 90s Beksinski s paintings were exhibited abroad, amongst others in France and Japan, and he became an internationally recognized artist. His style is sometimes compared to that of Hans Giger, the Swiss painter who designed the extra-terrestrial creatures for the famous 1979 film Alien. Designing Buses Beksinski, who was born in 1929, completed the Faculty of Architecture of the Kraków University of Technology. After working in construction, he started to work in his hometown, Sanok, as a bus designer for an automotive factory. In the 50s he became active as a photographer. Some of his photographic works are described as surrealistic-expressionist. One of his most famous photos, Sadist s Corset, shows Beksinski s liking for sadomasochistic themes. He eventually gave up on photography in the early 60s, because he grew disappointed with the limited possibilities of altering the images he captured. Photography seemed to constrain his imagination, so he turned to drawing and painting, fields which offered the possibility of photographing dreams, as he put it. Before he devoted himself to painting and drawing, but painting would prove to be the medium best suited to his personal vision. After having had his first successes as a painter, he was fired from the bus factory in 1967. Afterwards he worked exclusively as an artist. Dreams and Obsessions Beksinski paid little or no attention to trends in art - he had no intention of becoming a favourite of the critics. Instead he remained faithful to his dreams and obsessions, which in the end won him great popularity. In the 60s he created a number of sadomasochistic drawings. From the end of the 60s to the mid-80s he began working on his most famous period his fantastic series. The predominant themes in these oneiric works are hellish landscapes disturbing, nightmarish figures and grim, unearthly architecture. These made him a household name in Poland and brought him recognition abroad. After the so-called fantastic period Beksinski s style changed and he entered a period he described as gothic. The paintings from the gothic period represent deformed heads and less dreamlike figures, which display a specific plastic harmony. When computer editing of images became possible in the 90s, he was granted his wish of being able to add surrealistic alterations to photographs, and his career came full circle as he returned to his first medium. Tragedy Beksinski lived with his wife Zofia and their son Tomasz in Warsaw, where the three of them had moved from Sanok in 1977. In the capital the painter led a rather uneventful life he spent most of his time at his apartment working, listening to music and watching movies. He didn t like to go out, socialize or travel. Yet the series of misfortunes that befell Beksinski and his family caused the story of his last years to become very well known. In 1998 his wife died of cancer. A year later Tomasz, an esteemed translator and popular music journalist, aficionado of gothic rock, committed suicide. In 2005 the painter was stabbed to death at his apartment by his cleaning lady s 19 year-old son, who he had refused to loan the teenager money. Understandably, his tragic last years were often linked with the grimness