Zdzislaw Beksinski, WITHOUT TITLE, 1983

signed on the reverse on the board middleground: BEKSIŃSKI | 1983

The motif of a stele dominating an apocalyptic landscape appeared more than once in the artist's paintings from his Fantastic Period (1967-1983). Surrounding the grave slab overgrown with a pseudo-anatomical structure made of veins and bones is a view from the borderline between reality and fantasy. The sky covered with dark clouds, the elusive horizon fading into the gloom and the sea waves beating against the rusty shore of the ruin-covered, cracked earth create an uneasy and ominous mood. It was a common feature of the entire group of so-called metaphysical landscapes. Tadeusz Nyczek, an outstanding expert on the art of Zdzislaw Beksinski, characterized this most recognizable stage in the painter's work as follows:

Beksinski paints almost the same thing over and over again, and in fact the same way. Namely, these are alternately recurring at different intervals, almost constant motifs: heads or figures covered with peeling skin-web, faces in profile in helmets forged in the most varied patterns, Biblical Crucifixions, burning houses-cathedrals, objects flying in the air, corpse-like creatures crawling on the ground, hieratically seated figures of "kings" draped in fantastic robes, seascapes or meadow landscapes with motifs of single trees, tombstones or figures seated on a chair. [...] Each object, living or dead, is shaped only for the use of this art's own inner world. It is a form invented by the artist, although derived from a real and probable appearance. [...] Similarly, landscape. The sky, although similar to the sky, is never a natural sky. Even the clouds, so often depicted, are clouds only as Beksinski invented them. This sky can be yellowish in one painting, ochre in another, ashen, emerald or red in another. Depending on the overall color tone that prevails in the painting. The tree is generally the same, a leafless tree with thick, thin branches, sometimes bent in the wind, usually a strong one, engulfing everything in the painting, living and dead. The surface of the ground is usually either scorched soil, a swamp with puddles of standing water, or an indefinite "ground" on which bones, pieces of paper, or twisted intestines may just as well lie. (T. Nyczek, Zdzisław Beksiński, Arkady Warsaw 1989, pp. 14-15)

The visionary representation of the stele standing alone, presented in this catalog, is the essence of the painting of the Master from Sanok - technically extremely precise and sophisticated in color, captivating as much by its majestic beauty as by its poignancy.

Exhibited painting:

- Exhibition of paintings by Zdzislaw Beksinski, Museum of Minsk Land, Minsk Mazowiecki, May 18, 2013.

♣ An additional fee will be added to the Purchase Price resulting from the right of the creator and his heirs to receive remuneration in accordance with the Law of February 4, 1994 - on Copyright and Related Rights (droit de suite).

(Sanok 24 II 1929 - Warsaw 21 II 2005) studied from 1947 to 1952 at the Faculty of Architecture of the Cracow University of Technology.

He was a self-taught artist who achieved an unquestioned position in Polish contemporary art, confirmed by the presence of his works in prestigious exhibitions and museum collections. He was initially involved in photography, which he had been interested in since his student years, after 1956 gaining recognition as a creator of photograms with an aesthetic based on textural effects. In 1958-1962, he created abstract paintings-reliefs of rich texture, mainly metal, which are a variation of matter painting. Toward the end of this period, he created openwork forms with figure shapes and full-bodied sculptures in metal. The next stage of his work was 1962-1974, when he devoted himself mainly to drawing. In the 1960s he drew with pen and ink figural compositions characterized by caricatured deformation of figures. From the late 1960s, he created charcoal and crayon drawings, a monochromatic variant of his parallel painting work. Since 1974, he has dealt almost indivisibly with painting. His distinctive style was based on technical perfection, accompanied by an extraordinary vision. He painted a post-disaster world, marked by the stigma of death and decay. His paintings are populated by figures and creatures with admittedly human or animal shapes, but with the characteristics of phantoms, automatons or decaying corpses. The artist did not give his paintings and drawings titles (except for ordering symbols), thus emphasizing his lack of interest in the literary side of the depictions. He himself said that when painting he completely surrenders to the vision, "photographing" it. In recent years, he has incorporated electronic image generation techniques into his artistic technique, which he used to create computer photomontages. Beksinski's art, which has been exhibited and discussed many times, arouses extreme emotions among experts and the public.

The largest, systematically replenished collection of his works in the country is in the Historical Museum in Sanok, abroad - in Paris, in the possession of Piotr Dmochowski, who has been collecting works and promoting the artist's work since 1983. He organized individual exhibitions of Beksinski's works at, among others, Galerie Valmay in Paris in 1985, 1986 and 1988, as well as a permanent exhibition at Dmochowski's own Galerie - Musée-galerie de Beksinski, which existed from 1989 to 1996. He also published monumental albums of the artist in 1988 and 1991.

In Poland, Beksinski's monograph by Tadeusz Nyczek was published by Arkady in 1989 (second edition in 1992). In the spring of 2005, a large exhibition of Beksinski's paintings took place at the Abbotsford Palace in Gdansk Oliva, and the director of the Sanok Museum Wieslaw Banach published a comprehensive monograph on the artist.

Since October 2016, an exhibition of 250 works (paintings, drawings, photographs) by Zdzislaw Beksinski from the private collection of Anna and Piotr Dmochowski has become a permanent fixture at the Nowa Huta Cultural Center. Meanwhile, a permanent exhibition of 30 Beksinski paintings from the Dmochowskis' collection has also been on display at the Archdiocese Museum in Warsaw since June 2021.