A dance of the death - a gloomy painting of Zdzislaw Beksinski

Zdzislaw Beksinski (Zdzisław Beksiński) - the Polish artist, photographer and part-time my favorite painter. As for me, his paintings represent a reflection of a possible future, which I imagine in the style of Mad Max or Blade Runner.

The artist's works are performed in the genres of surrealism and magical realism. Beksinski called the period when he created his most successful and famous paintings as "fantastic".

Most of his life, Beksinski worked in Sanok, Poland. That's where his gallery is. Apparently, my love for him is not so strong, that I, while living in Poland, never went to Sanok, finding numerous excuses, but at least I will contribute to its popularization among the English-speaking population of the planet. That's how!

The end of the artist's life was extremely difficult. His wife died in 1998, the son committed suicide in '99, and Beksinski was killed in 2005 at the age of 75. He refused to lend money to adolescents, one of whom was his neighbor. They stabbed him for his refusal.

It turns out that the tragedy, the darkness went through his whole life. Can you imagine what was in his head (and he took all the images from his dreams) to draw such paintings? Although this art seems fine to me, I think most of you will not like his art. In the end, all this gloom caught him in reality, taking away his loved ones, and then his own life.

Many of his paintings have no names. Basically, the theme of death, apocalypse, and loneliness are traced in his art. We see mutilated bodies wrapped in rags or skeletons, the flesh of which was stuck together by half-dead birds and the wind tenderly sharpened the bones. The characters of his paintings often do not have faces, limbs, they are ugly. True, this does not prevent them from indulging in carnal pleasures in any places. It seems that lust is the only thing that they can feel. The intertwining of bodies, the reverent attitude to architecture are also the artist's things.

Let's have a look at the painting "Creeping death" (Pełzająca śmierć). Most likely that is the vision of Armageddon. In the background, we see a burning city, from which no one escaped. Death is inevitable, it crawls like a spider, quietly, slowly. No one notices it until gets caught in its tenacious paws. Leaving behind a city, illuminated by a blood-brown light, death moves on. The image of death resembles a man, an animal, and an insect (a spider). Beksinski shows us his own version of the death.

Why I love Beksinski's art? The first thing that immediately pops up in my mind is that they hypnotize me. In every picture there are so many details that you come back again and again, notice new things that you did not notice before.

Okay, let's move on to one of my favorite works. Drawn in 1984, oil/acrylic. In my opinion, the painting shows us a great love. Remember the stone people of Pompeii? These two are entwined in a fit of love, fear, horror before the impending death.

The next one. It's Notre-Dame de Paris, though, isn't it?

There is also such a version:

Rear-view. Perhaps Notre-Dame de Paris will look like that through the centuries when humanity will die out.

In general, we can write a whole book about the realm of the dead and illustrate it with paintings and sketches of Beksinski.

Apparently, they give birth to children:

Walk the dogs:

Dance:

Die:

There is, in fact, a theory that in a dream, we find ourselves in parallel worlds. All that you see in the paintings, Zdzislaw Beksinski saw in his dreams. Judging by the plots, he was in the same place over and over again, and there is no place for beauty and good. Everywhere there is desolation, chaos and horror. However, he also has a couple of light paintings. I call them a "window into our world." See for yourself:

If this theory is correct, then it becomes terrible that the dead from the Zdzislaw Beksinski world can spy on us.