Zdzislaw Beksinski, WITHOUT TITLE, 1979

73.0 x 62.0 cm - oil, fiberboard signed on the reverse on the board: BEKSIŃSKI 1979

on the reverse p.d. on the white board mortar, stamp of Foreign Trade Office "Desa" in Warsaw dated 22 I 1979, next to it stamp authorizing export abroad.

in the upper parts of the vertical reinforcing strips, handwritten inscriptions in black marker: 14/LG, 14/SR, 14/PG, on p. strip at bottom: D.



Reproduced image:

- Zdzislaw Beksinski Art Promotion Archive website;

- Dmochowski Gallery NET (Virtual Museum) website;

- Zdzislaw Beksinski. Painting and Drawing, Plock Art Gallery, Plock 2018, p. 12, color ill;

- Szomko-Osękowska D. (introduction), Beksinski in Warsaw. Expectation... Postscript, Spatinum Art, Warsaw 2021, p. 35, color ill;

- Kalina A., Pawlikowska A. (ed. and compilation), Matter. Texture. Form. Abakanowicz and Beksinski, Sopocki Dom Aukcyjny, Warsaw 2023, pp. 52-53, color ill.



Image exhibited:

- Beksinski and Leszczynski. Phantasmagoria, Bydgoszcz Art Center in Bydgoszcz, 11 XI 2017 - 17 I 2018;

- Zdzislaw Beksinski. Paintings and Drawings, Plock Art Gallery in Plock, May 18 - June 17, 2018;

- Beksinski in Warsaw, Praga Koneser Center in Warsaw, 26 VI - 5 IX 2021;

- Beksinski in Pruszcz Gdański, Wiedemann House in Pruszcz Gdański, 23 - 30 X 2022;

- Beksinski in Pabianice, Aflopa Art Gallery, 15 III - 15 VII 2024.



In 1979, the time of the painting's creation, Zdzislaw Beksinski had already managed to gain notoriety as the creator of metaphysical landscapes - which sometimes evoke extreme reactions among the public and critics. The unease of these multi-threaded compositions was founded on the presence of a gloomy, post-apocalyptic landscape, the designations of death, as well as a wide repertoire of bloodthirsty characters: phantoms, wraiths and man-like figures in a state of decay. The artist was faithful to this style in the so-called "fantastic period" falling in the years 1968-1984. The creative attitude of "Beks" during this period was approximated by Wieslaw Banach: During this time, Beksinski believes that he uses persiflage in his paintings, which, however, none of the viewers and critics read, looking rather for symbols in his paintings, the explanation of which he will be repeatedly solicited. These phantasmagorias - some exodus of bizarre figures in an extinct landscape, some floating heads in a vast landscape, some ghostly figure with a child on a leather-clad horse skeleton in a landscape stirred by a violent gale - all require explanation, according to the viewer. The artist says: no, meaning is irrelevant here. All that matters is the vision, its power, expression, the atmosphere of the painting. "Despite the fact that I paint crucifixions, crosses, cathedrals and various other things," he says in a conversation recorded on tape, "this is not a confession of faith (...) People begin to interpret, and interpret, most often using the symbolic path, that if wings - it's an angel, if an angel - it's something there, if birds - it's something there. And if the color blue is heaven and the Madonna, the color green means hope. This is foreign to me, well, because I don't think in these categories. I don't like to represent something by something. Rather, I want to convey a certain atmosphere, a mood, and I would like the painting to please in the same way as one likes, say, a symphonic poem, to already be the closest to something that conveys tension rather than having content that is actually translatable into words." (Z. Banach, Zdzislaw Beksinski [in:] Beksinski 3, BOSZ Olszanica 2018, pp. 7-8).

The painting presented in the catalog is an excellent example of "photographing a vision" transporting into a world on the borderline between reality and fantasy. Maintained in brown and ochre tones, the multifaceted scene involuntarily triggers a number of associations that boil down to vanitas. It will remain the viewer's decision whether to follow the erroneous - according to the artist - path of multiplied interpretations or intense "experience" and admiration of technical mastery.





♣ A fee will be added to the auctioned price in addition to other costs, based on the right of the artist and his heirs to receive remuneration in accordance with the Law of February 4, 1994 - on Copyright and Related Rights (droit de suite).

Zdzislaw Beksinski (Sanok 24 II 1929 - Warsaw 21 II 2005) studied at the Faculty of Architecture of the Cracow University of Technology from 1947 to 1952. He was a self-taught artist who achieved an unquestionable 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 major 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 been permanently installed 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.

(Photo: Piotr Dmochowski, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8960820 )