Zdzisław Beksiński

Nearly 200 photographs taken by Zdzisław Beksiński, including some never shown before, as well as fragments of non-professional films, are presented in the exhibition organised in the Four Domes Pavilion Museum of Contemporary Art to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the artist’s tragic death, dedicated to a less known but highly relevant aspect of his work – photography. The works by Beksiński are accompanied by a visualisation of his biography, especially prepared for this occasion by Norman Leto, and also photographs by iconic Polish artists of this genre – Jerzy Lewczyński and Bronisław Schlabs.

Zdzisław Beksiński (1929–2005) is known above all as a painter, a creator of surreal and apocalyptic images, yet he was also interested in photography, in particular in the 1950s and in the early 1960s. His oeuvre contained an extensive collection of photographs, valuable from the artistic viewpoint. In 1977, Beksiński gifted a large part of his photographic output to the National Museum in Wrocław, thus creating the largest collection of his photographs in Poland. 

”The exhibition aims at presenting the work of Beksiński in a wider context, in which he emerges not merely as a creator of images of horror and gloom but also as an artistic pioneer in search of new forms of expression, combating against limitations of the contemporary photographic art. His reflections provided a point of departure for a deeper analysis of the nature and role of this artistic medium in the context of present-day challenges” – says Aleksandra Szwedo, curator of the exhibition. 

The artist did not treat photography only as a tool serving to document reality in its natural form, but as a means to creative transformation. As he put it himself: “My shyness meant that I could pursue classical photography. My pictures were a creation – from start to finish – and an artistic creation at that”. For Beksiński, photography meant a process of imagining, in which a picture was first born in his mind, precisely arranged, and then realised in a deliberate and controlled way.  

The early works on display include landscapes – photographs close to abstract forms thanks to the use of sharp framing and specific play of light – and also portraits, in which the artist applied a characteristic effect of blurring. Both in these, and in later ones described as anti-portraits, Beksiński often moved away from an unambiguous presentation of faces, leaving them in the shade or shown in a narrow stream of light, emphasising the texture of the skin. In using raw, brutal aesthetics, the artist placed in the centre not just the human figure itself, but also its fragility or ugliness.

Zdzisław Beksiński was undoubtedly a surrealist, who in his photographs often questioned the realness of the world, explored the boundaries of human perception and the view of reality. Visitors are also drawn into this game when looking at the exhibited series of photographs whose main theme is the human body – dissected, incomplete, distorted, and multiplied.   

Among the showcased exhibits there are also self-portraits of Beksiński – photographs as well as his video diary – which played a fundamental role in all his work. The artist obsessively recorded himself, providing insight into  his everyday life and work, and also frequently played with his own image using mimics, disguises and props.   

Beksiński’s work is also shown in relation to selected photographs taken by Jerzy Lewczyński and Bronisław Schlabs. This trio of artists represents an important stage in the history of Polish art of photography, namely anti-photography. They experimented with form, creating works which moved beyond the traditional perception of the medium as a means of the true reflection of reality.   

Beksiński also suggested at that time a novel idea – sets of photographs, which he combined in a way similar to film editing. Visitors can view such exhibits assembled from a variety of materials – from anonymous images to documentary records and texts. Each element of such sets, e.g. a shocking title, makes part of this puzzle and also an intellectual game, full of tension and various associations.

There is also an element of surprise introduced into the exhibition, which is The Body Of Life of Zdzisław Beksiński [Bryła życia Zdzisława Beksińskiego], work created by Norman Leto in 1999 when he became friends with Beksiński, and which impacted on his own further artistic development. Leto’s work is an innovative visualisation of the biography of Beksiński, with its images projected on walls – dynamic and multilayer – presenting selected events from his personal life and some of the great moments as an artist, and the rapidly interrupted projection is a symbol of Beksiński’s tragic end.

The showcased photographs are part of the extensive collection in the National Museum in Wrocław, and are complemented by exhibits on loan from the Historical Museum in Sanok.

The exhibition is accompanied by a publication with texts by Weronika Kobylińska, Adam Mazur, Adam Sobota and Aleksandra Szwedo.

On 13 April 2025, in the Cinema New Horizonts in Wrocław there is a special viewing of the film “Z wnętrza” (2019, directed by Cezary Grzesiuk, Tomasz Szwan, and Krystian Kamiński). This is a unique documentary made up entirely from video materials realised by Zdzisław Beksiński and people closest to him. The showing will be followed by a meeting with Dr Adam Sobota, art historian and expert on the work of Zdzisław Beksiński. The event will be hosted by Aleksandra Szwedo, curator of the exhibition.

Piotr Oszczanowski, Director of the National Museum in Wrocław:

I have to note with great satisfction that it is the National Museum in Wrocław, which – owing to the initiative and efforts of Adam Sobota, curator in the Department of Photography – obtained in 1975 a sizeable part, nearly 200 exhibits, from the collection of photographs by Zdzisław Beksiński. At that time the Museum also received from the artist his unique sculptures made of metal and patinated plaster of Paris. 

The works by Zdzisław Beksiński in the collection of the National Museum in Wrocław constitute the second largest such collection after the Historical Museum in Sanok, to which Beksiński willed his photographic archive. The MNWr exhibitions of his photographs were always distinguished  by the fact that the showcased images comprised exclusively prints made personally by Beksiński, and only those which he considered as the best. This also applies to the present event.

The exhibition dedicated to a phenomenal artist such as Beksiński [„Fenomenalny. Zdzisław Beksiński”] serves as an individual debut in the role of the curator for Aleksandra Szwedo from the Department of Photography in the Four Domes Pavilion Museum of Contemporary Art – Branch of the National Museum in  Wrocław. The curator approached the legend of this exceptional artist and using the assistance of experts on his photographic art, was able to create this unparalleled opportunity to enter into the very private world of the artist, surreal in its inquisitiveness and sharpness of vision.  I have the pleasure of inviting our visitors to this unique event, highly memorable and inspiring to reflection.   

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