Beksiński. BoSzArt Malarstwo / Painting Series - Hardcover

Zdzisław Beksiński

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 8375762075 ISBN 13: 9788375762075

Publisher: Bosz Publishing House, 2015

Synopsis

Selection of the most important paintings by Zdzislaw Beksinski, one of the most original Polish painters of the twentieth century. Beksinski practiced photography, drawing, graphic art, computer graphics, sculpture, but most importantly painting. His fantastic, visionary, apocalyptic visions create recognizable at first glance style. Works of Beksinski are in museums and private collections in Poland and abroad, but the largest collection, numbering several thousand works, and the entire archive of the artist belong to the Historical Museum in Sanok. The images featured in this album come from this collection.

About this title

About the Author

Zdzislaw Beksinski was born in Poland in the town of Sanok near the Carpathians Mountains in 1929. After a childhood was spent during the Second World War, Beksinski went on to university where he studied architecture in Cracow. Subsequent to this education he spent several years as a construction site supervisor, a job he hated, fought with pressures and countless boring details. He would soon throw himself into the arts. In 1958, Beksinski began to gain critical praise for his photography, and later went on to drawing. His highly detailed drawings are often quite large, and may remind some of the works of Ernst Fuchs in their intricate, and nearly obsessive rendering.

Beksinski eventually threw himself into painting with a passion, and worked constantly, always to the strains of classical music. He soon became the leading figure in contemporary Polish art.

Beksinski and his family moved to Warsaw in 1977. The artist had many exhibitions throughout his native Poland and Europe. He rarely attended any of them. Bekinski's art hangs in the National Museums Warsaw, Sanok, Krakow, Poznan, and the Goteborgs Art Museum in Sweden. Much of his art is displayed in the Sanok Museum of art in his native city.

Drawings from the 1960s
Beksinki's remarkable drawings possess a strength in both mood and subject matter. Like his later paintings, they are intensely haunting and mysterious. The drawings, particularly, project a nightmarish quality reminiscent of the surrealist, Bohemian master, Alfred Kubin.

Paintings from the 1970s
Beksinski began painting in oils on Masonite around the year 1970. His ability to manipulate the effects of light quickly became a hallmark of his work, and can only be compared with the renown abilities of William Turner. Beksinski's paintings are masterfully rendered, monumental enigmas. One thing they share is an aesthetic of beauty so potent that it overpowers any desperate nature of the given subject matter, as is similarly the case with Swiss artist, H.R. Giger. The paintings as a whole are wonderfully dark, and allow the viewer to interpret them as they will, as they will certainly get no help from this particular artist. As Magritte said:

Paintings from the 1980s
Paintings and Computer Graphics from the 1990s: Beksniski's paintings have grown less representational over the years and now seem almost abstract in nature. Color and texture and now the principal themes in themselves. Not so odd, as the artist began his career in the abstract realm. His recent computer art, however, continues the lineage of fantastic realism, and the artist never allows the technology to get in the way of that he is attempting to convey creatively.

Beksinski was murdered in February of 2005, during a robbery attempt at his flat in Warsaw. He will be remembered as a brilliant artist, and by those who knew him, as a docile man with a profound wit and keen sense of the human condition. I cherish the time we spent corresponding as friends, self-aware neurotics who could not wait to try and top the other. What a remarkable piece of work he was. A bit of Woody Allen, a dash of Oscar Wilde for spice, and brushes of Francisco Goya and William Turner. (bio courtesy of James Cowan)

Review

Decay and Darkness
During his long career Zdzislaw Beksinski worked in many fields of art: sculpture, photography, graphic art, drawing, and last but not least, painting. All of Beksinski s paintings are untitled he wanted to avoid any metaphorical interpretation of his paintings. As an artist, Beksinski was fascinated with death, decay and darkness. But those weren t his only fascinations. He was also known his interest in eroticism, abstractionism and Eastern mysticism. From the mid-60s onwards, he was very popular in Poland. In the 80s and 90s Beksinski s paintings were exhibited abroad, amongst others in France and Japan, and he became an internationally recognized artist. His style is sometimes compared to that of Hans Giger, the Swiss painter who designed the extra-terrestrial creatures for the famous 1979 film Alien.

Designing Buses
Beksinski, who was born in 1929, completed the Faculty of Architecture of the Kraków University of Technology. After working in construction, he started to work in his hometown, Sanok, as a bus designer for an automotive factory. In the 50s he became active as a photographer. Some of his photographic works are described as surrealistic-expressionist. One of his most famous photos, Sadist s Corset, shows Beksinski s liking for sadomasochistic themes. He eventually gave up on photography in the early 60s, because he grew disappointed with the limited possibilities of altering the images he captured. Photography seemed to constrain his imagination, so he turned to drawing and painting, fields which offered the possibility of photographing dreams, as he put it. Before he devoted himself to painting and drawing, but painting would prove to be the medium best suited to his personal vision. After having had his first successes as a painter, he was fired from the bus factory in 1967. Afterwards he worked exclusively as an artist.

Dreams and Obsessions
Beksinski paid little or no attention to trends in art - he had no intention of becoming a favourite of the critics. Instead he remained faithful to his dreams and obsessions, which in the end won him great popularity. In the 60s he created a number of sadomasochistic drawings. From the end of the 60s to the mid-80s he began working on his most famous period his fantastic series. The predominant themes in these oneiric works are hellish landscapes disturbing, nightmarish figures and grim, unearthly architecture. These made him a household name in Poland and brought him recognition abroad. After the so-called fantastic period Beksinski s style changed and he entered a period he described as gothic. The paintings from the gothic period represent deformed heads and less dreamlike figures, which display a specific plastic harmony. When computer editing of images became possible in the 90s, he was granted his wish of being able to add surrealistic alterations to photographs, and his career came full circle as he returned to his first medium.

Tragedy
Beksinski lived with his wife Zofia and their son Tomasz in Warsaw, where the three of them had moved from Sanok in 1977. In the capital the painter led a rather uneventful life he spent most of his time at his apartment working, listening to music and watching movies. He didn t like to go out, socialize or travel. Yet the series of misfortunes that befell Beksinski and his family caused the story of his last years to become very well known. In 1998 his wife died of cancer. A year later Tomasz, an esteemed translator and popular music journalist, aficionado of gothic rock, committed suicide. In 2005 the painter was stabbed to death at his apartment by his cleaning lady s 19 year-old son, who he had refused to loan the teenager money. Understandably, his tragic last years were often linked with the grimness of his art. --Culture.pl, The Cursed Paintings of Zdzislaw Beksinski (Culture.pl)

I wish to paint in such a manner as if I were photographing dreams. --Zdzislaw Beksinski

Apocalyptic and dystopian art has been popular since about the 90s. Few works are darker than those of Zdzis aw Beksi ski. His creatures are misshaped wretches that might have been human once, his landscapes are painted orange and red by some unseen fires; Eerie monstrosities stride in the mists surrounding foreboding monuments. What does it all mean? Nothing Beksinski never knew the meaning behind his works and was adamant against any sort of interpretation. Despite what his work would suggest, Zdzislaw Beksinski was considered to be a kind man who possessed a keen sense of humor. He didn t like painting in silence, so he was always surrounded by classical music (though he didn t mind rock, either). Beksinski credited music as his inspiration.

His life ended tragically: his son killed himself a year after Beksinski wife had died, and he was eventually stabbed to death over $100. --Polish Artist s Terrifying Art And His Sad Life Story, deMilked

About this edition

• Publisher: Bosz Publishing House
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 8375762075
• ISBN 13: 9788375762075
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 64
• Editor: Wieslaw Banach