Zdzisław Beksiński

Beksiński was an engineer, photographer, sculptor, draftsman, and graphic artist. The artist began his education in Sanok, where he finished junior high and high school. In 1947, he began studying at the Faculty of Architecture of the AGH University of Science and Technology currently at the Cracow University of Technology. After finishing, in 1952, being obliged to work, he had to stay first in Cracow, then move to Rzeszów, and in 1955 return to Sanok. In 1951 he married Zofia Stankiewicz who in the 1950s posed for many artistic photographs of her husband. In the years 1959–1970 he worked at the Autosan bus factory as a designer, however most of his designs did not enter production. In his hometown, Zdzisław Beksiński began his artistic career with photography, proving himself an independent and innovative creator, ahead of many discoveries of the European avant-garde. He was a member of the Association of Polish Art Photographers. While still working in Rzeszów, he began to prepare a lot of sketches, he noted his ideas which he implemented in later years. In Sanok he became interested in sculpting, he created abstract full-plastic sculptures and reliefs made mainly of metal, wire and sheet metal. In his work full of symbolic allusion, Beksiński also developed his unique innovative style. We know very little of his sculptures, probably related to space constraints and the lack of appropriate conditions. Leaving Sanok, he donated figurative sculptures that were created in the 1960s to the National Museum in Wrocław. In Sanok, apart from the large figurative Hamlet, there is a series of heads made of patinated plaster, there are also metal reliefs – simplified faces with multiplied eyes, lips, noses, shown from the front. The extraordinary originality of this art resulted in an invitation to a scholarship to the United States to the Guggenheim Museum in 1960, which the artist declined. Beksiński remains best known for his painting.