Zdzisław Beksiński

Beksinki has actually been one of my favorites recently, so I am really excited to introduce him to y´all.

Zdzisław Beksiński was a Polish painter, graphic artist, stage designer and architect, creator of monumental paintings in the Baroque and Gothic spirit, representative of Polish symbolism, surrealism and modernism. His work is influenced by the dark times after World War II and the tragedy of his family. Born in Sanok in southern Poland, Beksiński studied first at the Sanok Business School and later at a private grammar school. During his studies, on April 30, 1951, he married Zofia, b. Stankiewicz.

He worked as a construction manager for several years but hated this job, so in 1955 he returned to Sanok with his wife. At this time, he became interested in art, photography, photomontage, sculpture and painting. He created his sculptures and relief paintings from plaster, metal and wire. He usually worked part-time, and he devoted himself to artistic creation for the rest of his time. His photographs and later paintings included themes such as wrinkled faces, landscapes and objects with a very rough texture. By that, he tried to emphasize (especially by manipulating light and shadow) morbid motifs such as a deformed doll without a face, portraits of people without faces or with faces in bandages. Then, in his work, he focused on painting, which was initially abstract, but after 1960, the influence of surrealism appeared.

Beksiński was not artistically educated. His paintings were mostly made of oil on hardboard, which he prepared himself. The prestigious exhibition in Warsaw in 1964 became his first great success - all his works were sold. Beksiński immersed himself in painting with passion and worked continuously.

Towards the end of the 1960s, Beksiński entered what he called "fantastic", lasting until the mid-1980s. It was his most famous period. He created very grim paintings depicting a surrealistic, post-apocalyptic environment with detailed scenes of death and decay, landscapes full of skeletons, deformed figures and deserts.

On February 21, 2005, Beksiński was found dead in his Warsaw apartment with 17 stab wounds, two of which were fatal. Robert Kupiec (the teenage son of the caretaker Beksiński) confessed to the crime. The end of the 1990s was very difficult for Beksiński. His wife Zofia died in 1998, and a year later, on Christmas Day 1999, his son Tomasz committed suicide.

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