oil, fiberboard, 88.5 x 92 cm
signed on the reverse: BE | BEKSIŃSKI
Provenance:
- The painting was purchased in 1990 in Paris for the Museum of European Art in Osaka, Japan. - After the museum closed, private collection in Asia.
Image exhibited, reproduced and described:
- Beksinski. Paris-Osaka-Warsaw, Agra-Art Gallery, Warsaw 1 July - 4 September 2021, cat. no. 41, pp. nlb. ill. in color;
- Japanese Collection. Beksinski and others, Agra-Art, Warsaw 2021, p. 115, color ill.
Associated with this infliction of suffering is the accusation of cruelty often used against me. The accusation is completely unfounded, because I am incredibly offended by this type of works, if they are realistic in nature, and even more - if they have historical references. I can walk out of the cinema if I am confronted with a drastic occupation film. The authors of the accusations do not see the difference between expressing the author's mental state or spiritual danger in a picture and a strictly realistic description of the macabre, which I never did and do not do. [The issue of this allegedly flaying skin, which in the opinion of my interlocutors and critics was supposed to flay "after napalm". It was simply the need to paint something in every part of the picture, a need common to probably a very large number of contemporary and past artists, that specific "horror vacui." When I painted a nude, I had to - literally had to - cover it with either writing, veins or various kinds of painterly interesting details, among which was also this skin-drapery. When I painted a wall - the plaster had to peel from it; when I painted the interior - it had to be covered with cobwebs, and the floor covered with various kinds of trash. A smooth body, a smooth wall, a straight row of windows, a clean interior, a mirrored floor were and are for me synonymous with painting boredom.
Zbigniew Taranienko, Rozmowy o malarstwie, Warsaw 1987, pp. 197-198.