Zdzislaw Beksinski (1929 - 2005), Untitled, circa 1988

marker, paper, 32 x 23 cm, signed p.g.: 'Beksinski'

Painter, sculptor, photographer, illustrator and computer graphics artist. From 1947 to 1952 he studied at the Faculty of Architecture at the Cracow University of Technology. Beksinski's oeuvre can be divided into two periods: the avant-garde period, which lasted for only the first few years, and the second, during which the artist develops an image appropriate to his art, recognizable by the public. Initially engaged in photography, he created, among other things, collages, so-called anti-photographs, as well as abstract reliefs and metal figures. The artist's early works were realized in the convention of informel, painted in relief with thickly laid paint. In the early 1960s, he fully devoted himself to fantasy, visionary, figurative painting, carefully painted with oil paint on fiberboard. The first period of this painting, influenced by Eastern mysticism, was full of symbols, mysterious content and a catastrophic, horror-filled atmosphere. In 1977, he left Sanok and moved permanently to Warsaw. In the 1980s, he moved away from "anecdote", distracting from the pure form of painting, and turned again to his earlier experience with abstract painting, but still using a clear form. He exhibited in France, Germany and almost all important centers in Poland. In 1999, the Historical Museum prepared the largest retrospective exhibition of the artist at the castle in Sanok. The Historical Museum in Sanok also has the richest collection of the artist's works. In the fall of 2011, a large retrospective of two hundred and fifty works from the collection of Anna and Piotr Dmochowski was organized at the House of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Since May 2016, Beksinski's paintings from the private collection of Anna and Piotr Dmochowski can be seen at the Municipal Art Gallery in Częstochowa, while this fall saw the inauguration of a permanent exhibition of 50 paintings, 100 drawings and 100 artistic photographs at the Nowa Huta Cultural Center also from the Dmochowskis' collection. Of great value for the popularization of the person of Zdzislaw Beksinski was the publication of Magdalena Grzebałkowska's book "Beksinskis. Portret podwójny" and the creation of the film "The Last Family" by Jan A.P. Matuszyński, for which he received the "Golden Lions" in 2016.