Trained as an architect, he began his work as a young artist with black-and-white photographs, which quickly brought him fame and winning prizes in international competitions. Even these early works were on his work-typical atmosphere driven. Characterized by deformed bodies, whose flesh is painfully depicted and rigid, frightened figures.
To process own experienced strokes of fate in the art is a method, which some artist appropriated have, so also Beksiński. Morbid and visionary at the same time shows the artist openly his wounds and those of all mankind.
Beksiński grew up in a Poland traumatized by war on, destruction and human suffering, were to be themes that he took up again and again in his works and that tragically on how ran a thread through his own life.
Turning to figurative painting
When he turned to painting in the 1970s, he devoted himself exclusively to figurative painting, which includes the three works that will be auctioned this year in our house. One of them probably shows the "Tower of Babel" - that biblical story in which people wanted to build a tower high to God. But God let just this collapse and gave them different languages, so that they not could communicate with each other and linguistically separated from each other.
The letter "Ain", which was placed far up the tower and is pronounced similarly in Hebrew how the English "Eye", could on allude to the eye of God. In addition, this letter often symbolizes the Bible itself.
In his paintings, the artist plays with elements of mysticism and of symbolism. So the ship setting sail, carrying a cross, leaves us as viewers on the small piece of mainland, which can be seen only in the lower right corner of the picture.
Also the woman's head, rooted in ocher hues with the dune-like landscape of our earth, stimulates the imagination of the viewer. The distance and coolness that are quite typical of the work, make clear to us, that we make out such vital issues with ourselves have. Questions develop: Does my faith leave me? how is my connection to "Mother Earth"? how do I behave as a human being in a society of diverse cultures?
By conviction without title
Beksiński gave his works no titles, because they are to be interpreted by each viewer at will; "None of my pictures has only one statement, but so many how viewers. Everyone has his feelings and his own association to it".
I would like to paint so as if I were photographing dreams
Zdzisław Beksiński
Three works, which show the direction of his profound odyssey through the underworld of the dream- and world of thoughts. True feelings, fear and despair can just as how the Search after a sense of the life mostly only in dreams actually pictorially take place and often also only there by the own psyche to be processed. Because here the images flow into each other, without everyday boundaries or restrictions by the regular daily routine. Painted in a mixture of realism and surrealism, the artist tries to capture a "photo of the dream" in his works.
This creative solution has Beksinski over decades of his work in various genres, through photography, drawings, painting to digital media art to own, to probably not only for himself, but also for the viewer to break open all the surfaces of everyday life and also on the dark side of life to look.
Beksiński himself met a tragic fate, in 1998 his wife died after a serious illness, a year later his son, a well-known radio presenter, committed suicide. Beksiński never recovered from this blow. In 2005 he was murdered by the son of his janitor.
His art inspired many notable artist of our time, including filmmaker and Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro, who said of his work, "In the medieval tradition, Beksinski seems to believe that art is a forewarning for the fragility of the flesh - whatever pleasures we know are doomed - so it his paintings manage to evoke simultaneously the process of decay and the ongoing struggle for life . They carry a secret poetry, stained with blood and rust.".
In his will, Beksiński bequeathed his entire artistic output object to the Historical Museum in Sanok, his hometown. He was already extremely attached to this during his lifetime. The museum houses paintings, an extensive collection of photographs and graphics by the artist. Among them are also multimedia recordings, letters or films documenting the life of the artist. So can also be traced the exhibitions between the 1970 - 1990s, which were organized internationally.
