Life and Work

Zdzisław Beksiński was born on 24 February 1929 in Sanok. It was also there that he completed his secondary education. In 1947, he began his studies at the Faculty of Architecture of the Kraków University of Technology.

After graduating in 1952, he was required by a work assignment to remain first in Kraków, then move to Rzeszów, before returning to Sanok in 1955. In 1951, he married Zofia Helena, née Stankiewicz (born 25 March 1928 in Dynów, died in Warsaw on 22 September 1998), who
posed for many of her husband’s artistic photographs in the 1950s. In 1958, Tomasz Beksiński was born – the only child of Zofia and Zdzisław (d. 24 December 1999)

In his hometown, Zdzisław Beksiński practised photography, proving himself to be an independent and innovative artist, anticipating many of the discoveries of the European avant-garde. His photographic oeuvre culminates in a series of photomontages consisting of juxtapositions of various photographs with no apparent connection between them. Whilst still working in Rzeszów, he began to draw extensively.

In Sanok, he created three-dimensional sculptures and reliefs. He practised abstraction, which dominated the art world at the time and, in Poland, became the strongest reaction to the imposed socialist realism. In his abstract work, Beksiński also forged his own path, far removed from the dominant tachisme.

His reliefs, whether white or black, captivate with their multi-layered surface structure, which is both exceptionally refined and highly expressive. The sculptures are now effectively figurative – foreshadowing his future painting. In the Sanok collection, this period is represented not only by six abstract paintings, but also by a large-scale sculpture and two plaster heads. The shift from abstraction towards figurative art is decisive. An expressive, even drastic style of art emerges, gaining an ever-growing following. In 1960, Beksiński’s works, exhibited during the congress of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA), caught the attention of the then president of AICA and director of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, who offered Beksiński a six-month scholarship in the USA. The artist, already conscious of his own creative path, remained in Sanok, not wishing for the trip to distract him from his own artistic explorations. The first significant success of this art form was the exhibition organised in 1964 by Janusz Bogucki at the Old Orangery in Warsaw. When Bogucki exhibited Beksiński’s paintings again in Warsaw in 1972, the artist surprised viewers with a complete break from the avant-garde. The works on display there, mainly landscapes and figurative compositions, marked the beginning of the so-called ‘fantastic period’, which would cement his position in contemporary art, revealing a wholly individual and, in essence, solitary creative path, as if in defiance of all avant-garde trends and movements. Beksiński would gain ardent supporters, not to say devotees, and at the same time equally fierce critics and opponents. His painting would cease to fit within the conventions of contemporary art presentation.

His artistic success improves his financial situation, allowing him to live solely from his art. His paintings fetch increasingly high prices. The ‘fantastic period’ is associated primarily with the artist’s stay in Sanok. However, the city authorities are planning to demolish the artist’s family home. Beksiński decides to move to Warsaw and, in 1976, sets up a flat and studio in a block of flats in Ursynów. In the summer of 1977, Beksiński finally gives up his flat in Sanok and moves to Warsaw. Contacts with the art dealer Piotr Dmochowski, who lived in France, and the contract signed with him led to an attempt to promote the artist in the West. The collaboration, which initially developed well, would turn into a conflict when the artist began to move away from the style of painting characteristic of the ‘fantastic period’, which had brought him such success. The subjects of his paintings narrow down to figures or the heads of one or several figures. We see landscapes less and less frequently, and these are now devoid of that visionary illusory quality. The artist focuses more on artistic means and less on the subject matter.

The works are becoming increasingly painterly, whilst the subject or motif takes a back seat. Sometimes they are composed of countless lines, taking on the appearance of a quasi-drawing; at other times, the main form seems to emerge from the painterly space, almost like a three-dimensional sculpture. In the early 1990s, Beksiński bought a photocopier and, after many years, returned to drawing, created using copied stages of work, leading towards various solutions. However, it was only the computer that provided him with the real possibility of freely processing an effect already achieved without the risk of destroying it, as in traditional painting or drawing. In the last few years, the artist has been producing work that we usually refer to as computer graphics. In a sense, he is returning here to photography, particularly to photomontage. His computer graphics are created exclusively through the processing of photographs, never by introducing his own drawings. This incomparably more sophisticated method of ‘photomontage’ than in the past, in the traditional darkroom, allows him, in a sense, to return to the ideas formulated during his ‘fantastic period’, when he saw his painting as an inferior, more laborious way of ‘photographing dreams and fantasies’.

Distant echoes of this very way of thinking, realised through new means, give rise to a dilemma: what kind of medium are we actually dealing with – highly processed photography, or perhaps, after all, a form of painting created in a distinctive manner? For the artist, however, what ultimately counts is the result achieved, not the means by which he achieves it. Zdzisław Beksiński’s work is inextricably linked with Sanok and the Historical Museum, though, paradoxically, he has had few solo exhibitions here. The museum purchased its first work in 1964, and in 1968 a solo exhibition was organised for the artist. His works have always been present in the museum’s permanent exhibitions. In 1982, the museum presented an exhibition based on its own collection and paintings on loan from residents of Sanok. In 1988, drawing on an artistic photograph donated to the National Museum in Wrocław, his achievements in this field were revisited. For many years, the Historical Museum has been displaying its collection in various cities across Poland. The most representative and, at the same time, largest exhibition, expanded to include exhibits on loan from several museums, was shown at the Art Exhibitions Office in Poznań.

The exhibition, prepared in 2002 in the halls of Sanok Castle, is the only comprehensive presentation of the artist’s work. It is largely an individual exhibition – just as the Sanok collection is an individual one. The artist chose almost all the works in the Historical Museum’s collection as the most important of his oeuvre, intending them to be presented in the museum. Toward the end of his life, the artist deposited paintings and drawings from his recent years, further supplementing the collection with works identified as important to his oeuvre. On February 21, 2005, Zdzisław Beksiński was brutally murdered in his Warsaw apartment. In accordance with the artist’s will, the Historical Museum became his sole heir, taking over several thousand works, including photographs, drawings, prints, and paintings. In 2006, a major posthumous Beksiński retrospective was organized at the National Museum in Gdańsk, encompassing a cross-section of the artist’s entire oeuvre. All the works on display came from the Sanok museum’s collection. On May 19, 2012, the new Zdzisław Beksiński Gallery was opened in the rebuilt southern wing of the castle, along with the recreated Warsaw studio.