Zdzislaw Beksinski, WITHOUT TITLE, 1967

116,3 x 62,2cm - oil, panel Signed on reverse on panel: BEKSIŃSKI 1967



Provenance: Private collection, Germany.

The motif of crucifixion appeared systematically in Beksinski's work over the years, mainly in the so-called fantastic period (1968-1983). The featured painting, early and not yet as texturally perfect as his later ones, is characterized by a side perspective. An emaciated body in a state of decomposition is shown on a dark cross, barely visible in the upper part of the composition. A gray transparent veil covers the figure's head. It moves in the wind giving the representation a sinister expression. Sophisticated color nuances bring out the intricate, pseudo-anatomical structure of bones and muscles from the background.

According to critics, the artist's echoing of the motif of death was intended to give viewers a shock, which paradoxically led to its "taming." [Death] is one great circle of obsession for this art, which, perhaps through this, wants this destruction, death - to unmask it, tame it, take the sting of surprise out of it. For to deal with death on a daily basis is like depriving it of its innate, absurd cruelty of inevitability. Something that happens only once - it will be recalled every moment, with each new image. A settled, stroked death, though no less ruthless, is easier to accept later, when it actually arrives (Tadeusz Nyczek, Zdzislaw Beksinski or Taming of Death, "Student," No. 6, 1973).

The image appeared in the 1973 film Conversations of the Master with Death, directed by Franciszek Kuduk (18'27'' - 18'37'').

♣ to the auctioned price, in addition to other costs, will be added a fee resulting from the right of the creator and his heirs to receive remuneration in accordance with the Act of February 4, 1994 - on Copyright and Related Rights (droit de suite)

(Sanok 24 II 1929 - Warsaw 21 II 2005) studied from 1947 to 1952 at the Faculty of Architecture of the Cracow University of Technology.

He was a self-taught artist who achieved an unquestioned 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 become a permanent fixture 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 )