Zdzisław Beksiński was a renowned Polish painter, photographer, and sculptor. Born in 1929, he grew up in southern Poland, then traveled to Krakow to study architecture where he subsequently spent several miserable years working as a construction site supervisor. His work from that era is primarily photography and sculpture.In the late 1960s, Beksiński entered what he himself called his "fantastic period", which lasted up to the mid-1980s. This is his best-known period, during which he created very disturbing images, showing a surrealistic, post-apocalyptic environment with very detailed scenes of death, decay, landscapes filled with skeletons, deformed figures and deserts. These paintings were quite detailed, painted with his trademark precision. At the time, Beksiński claimed, "I wish to paint in such a manner as if I were photographing dreams".
Although he depicts a harrowing world, Beksiński claimed that much of his work is misunderstood. Like Kafka (known to laugh hysterically when reading his own stories aloud), the Polish painter was often amused by his own work. He insisted his vision was ultimately optimistic.
In 1998, after years of illness, his wife Zofia died. A year later, his son Tomasz (a popular Polish radio personality and movie translator) committed suicide. Beksiński, who discovered his son’s body, was never quite the same.
On 21 February 2005, Beksiński was found dead in his flat in Warsaw with 17 stab wounds on his body; two of the wounds were determined to have been fatal. Robert Kupiec (the teenage son of his longtime caretaker), who later pleaded guilty, and a friend were arrested shortly after the crime. On 9 November 2006 Robert Kupiec was sentenced to 25 years in prison, and his accomplice, Łukasz Kupiec, to 5 years by the court of Warsaw. Before his death, Beksiński refused a loan to Robert Kupiec a few hundred złotys (approximately $100).
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