Zdzisław Beksiński, Painter of Nightmares (Art Analysis)

 

It was difficult for me to find just a single piece of Zdzisław Beksiński's art to talk about. I have a handful of favorite artists: Rembrandt, H.R. Giger, M.C. Escher, and Zdzisław Beksiński certainly makes the list. This is work is untitled, oil on canvas, with the exact timing on when he made it being also unknown. Zdzisław Beksiński is a dystopian surrealist who was born in Poland in the 1929. He died in 2005. He was a young boy during World War II, and when the Soviets took over Poland he was present for the duration of the U.S.S.R. and his country was part of the Warsaw Pact (Banach). This particular piece is probably from his "fantastic period" Which happened between 1960-1980 roughly speaking (Banach). That twenty years of time is when he produced pieces like this and it has some of the strongest works in his portfolio. He insists his works were abstract and have no meaning whatsoever. 

 

The reason I don’t believe that is in Poland in the time when he was at his peak there was no freedom of speech. Artists had to be particularly careful only to create what was going to be received well by the Communist Party. He was in a country where the KGB was prevalent, and he was probably asked many times what it meant. It means nothing. I don’t believe that. 

I like baroque art in general I enjoy the interplay of light and dark. I like how oppressive shadow in a painting or drawing can really draw attention to other items in the work. There is a series if you could call them that, of cathedrals that Beksiński draws. He has a series on crucifixes, deformed people, and hellish landscapes. 

 

Beksiński only works in a certain color palette, usually it’s a warm earthy tones, something you might imagine on the surface of Mars. This oil painting diverts from what he typically does by incorporating greys, Prussian blue, lighter values and even some sea green. Prussian blue is though to be symbolic in the works where it appears, because it’s the exact shade of blue that would left over as a residue from using Zyklon B, the chemical agent used in Auschwitz to execute thousands of Poles. He grew up in Poland during both Nazi and Soviet occupations, historically neither of those were good. The moment you contextualize Zdzisław Beksiński in my opinion you can start to see someone who is trying to pry open his own unconscious trauma and work through it productively.  

 

The first thing that is communicated is desolation, we have a wide open spaces, a dismal sky that is deliberately lacking in detail. There is the impression of the sky with perhaps mist or smoke in the atmosphere suggesting a lighter area but not much else. This forms a contrast with the line work in the center of the piece. Sometimes the linework is intricate enough to communicate the text of gothic stone arches, but in other places that texture looks like bone, and very subtlety it changes to skin. Theres value contrast between the light sky and the dark cathedral. Similar contrast exists between the light ground and the tombstones. The choice of color is unsettling and the work is eerie.

 

What I appreciate about the aesthetic is a couple of things. I think there is an attempt to work through pain and trauma. You would expect at a cathedral to see things of beauty and to hopefully be uplifted. You would not expect it to be dead and you wouldn’t expect it to be complete empty and abandoned. It’s something like a quiet dystopia. There is peace and perhaps even serenity but there is something wrong about it that is bothersome to the viewer. The contexts are very different and sometimes I find myself feeling the same way about life. It’s like someone was trying to communicate what I was feeling and painted it on canvas. Because of how it’s presented it feels like it is Jungian and symbolic, especially with the repeated motifs.    

 

Works Cited

Banach, Wiesław . Zdzisław Beksiński [Historical Museum in Sanok]. https://muzeum.sanok.pl/en/zbiory/zdzislaw-beksinski. Accessed 6 June 2024.