Guests to my Internet gallery already know that some time ago I divided it into two parts: “Gallery A - Zdzisław Beksiński”, which was devoted solely to the artist, and “Gallery B - Other artists”, devoted to other artists whose works I show in appreciation of their talent.

In “Gallery A”, devoted solely to Beksiński, I have shown his selected works in a form of consecutive exhibitions, without following any specific order. Back at the time when the artist was still alive, I started with an exhibition of his paintings from the “fantasy” and then “baroque” époque. Next I inserted the drawings from the youth period, followed by the paintings from the last decade of the artist’s life etc.

All that stuff was very chaotic and fragmentary as I reproduced the works which I liked myself and neglected the ones that I was not interested in.

Now, on the fifth anniversary of Beksiński’s death the time has come to supplement and put everything in order.

First of all, today I am changing the name of “Gallery A - Zdzisław Beksiński” to “The Virtual Museum of Zdzisław Beksiński”. At the same time I am publishing a few hundred more works than I have done so far. Last but not least I am putting them in a chronological order, which is also the order of various tools that Beksiński used in his works and different styles that he followed.

The Virtual Museum is divided into sixteen Rooms, each of which (beside the paintings presented in four Rooms and the drawings presented in as many as five Rooms) is dedicated to Bekisński’s works made by means of a different medium.

A visit starts then with the photographs from the 1950s, as the camera was the first tool of the Master’s expression. The First Room is dedicated to this technique.

Next, at the end of the 1950s Beksiński gave up photography to start making abstract sculptures and reliefs of metal sheet, wire and gypsum. Therefore, the Second Room is dedicated to this form of expression.

Almost at the same time Beksiński, influenced by Picasso, started to draw half-abstract pictures in pencil, ink, ballpoint pen and coloured pencil. These drawings are shown in theThird Room. The Fourth Room contains drawings from the 1960s, when the artist discovered his sadomasochist tendencies. In the 1970s Beksiński created a series of drawings – fantasy pictures, which except the tool (these works were drawn with a pencil, not with a brush) did not differ from his “baroque” paintings from that time. The drawings may be seen in the Fifth Room. Then, in the early 1980s the artist gave up drawing to take it up again at the end of the 80s. This drawings, more sketchy, are presented in the Sixth Room. Finally, around the mid-90s he started to draw a completely new series of pictures the parts of which were painted with watercolours. The Seventh Room is devoted to these pictures.

As you can see, Beksiński drew for most of his adult life, from the 1950s to 2005. The drawings underwent different changes and the ones from the 50s are hugely different from those from the mid-1960s, while the latter in turn differ from the drawings created at the end of the 1980s and even more from the ones dating from the 2000s.

That is why they had to be divided into groups.

The Eighth Room is devoted to monotype. It was a technique used by Beksiński alongside with the first abstract drawings. Few of these monotypes have survived, so this room contains merely a couple of works.

Parallel to drawings and monotypes, Beksiński dealt with heliotypes. This technique, invented by the artist himself, consisted in covering a piece of glass with black paint, which was next drawn with a sharp tool. Then, so created piece of work was put on photosensitive paper and exposed to the sun. This way the artist made four copies of each heliotype, which he next stamped on the reverse and numbered. Finally he destroyed the glass containing the prototype. There are only few such works, so the Ninth Room seems to be merely a witness of the tool used by Beksiński rather than its thorough presentation.

In 1968 Beksiński started to paint. Admittedly, the artist had used the brush before, but later, being ashamed of those first attempts, he burnt his early paintings. The first picture that deserves attention was the painting of a gagged head, with which a visit to the Tenth Room begins. According to Beksiński, the époque of his real painting started with that picture. The Tenth Room presents paintings from 1968-1983, which used to be called a “fantasy” period (the malicious will say “anecdotal”). They are filled with emotions, meanings (sometimes planned by the author, but most frequently imputed by the public) and visionary imagination. The colours are lively, the figures painted with precision, and each painting hides a mystery surrounded by anxiety and ominous atmosphere.

Around the year 1984 Beksiński started to draw in a different, more economical way, with a less amount of landscape, perspective, motion and lush colours. These pictures are shown in the Eleventh Room, covering the period from ca 1984 to approximately 1989 inclusive.

At the close of the 1980s Beksiński’s painting underwent another big change towards a simplified form and subdued colours. These paintings, going back to the period from 1990 to ca 1994 inclusive, are presented in the Twelfth Room.

Finally, the paintings shown in the Thirteenth Room are completely different from all the previous ones. Some of them look as if they were built of cobweb, where the brush fills the board space with a thin thread, the tangles of which form the mass of a face, building or figure. Other pictures are painted with a small, jagged stroke. All of them seem to be deliberately deprived of an emotional charge, and their colours are almost monochromatic. This period covers the years from about 1995 to the artist’s death, i.e. 2005.

The Fourteenth Room is devoted to works created with a photocopier as Beksiński, similarly to music composers, was among others interested in creating variations on one theme and a photocopier could help him to achieve that aim. Beksiński resorted to a photocopier so as not to do the whole work again when creating a variation – he usually introduced fragmentary changes in the arrangement of arms, legs or head. He drew a figure, head or another theme on typing paper and next photocopied the so created work. Then the artist covered a part of the photocopy with white paint and against the so prepared background made a planned change in Chinese ink. Next, a half-copied and half-drawn work was photocopied again. And so on and so forth. This way each work was very similar to the previous one, containing only a few changes. To an untutored eye it was difficult to distinguish such works from trivial photocopies, because the Chinese ink used by Beksiński looked nearly identical as the toner in the photocopier, so the artist soon gave up this technique and got rid of the photocopier. However, another reason why Beksiński said goodbye to the medium was because he found a better tool for creating numerous variations of the same theme.

Therefore, the Fifteenth Room is devoted to computer photomontage. Beksiński started to deal with it by taking a photograph in a street and scanning it in the computer. Next he made distortions on a scan and this way created numerous variations revolving around the same main theme. There are more than one hundred and fifty such computer photomontage works. Most of them I publish in the Fifteenth Room. I wish to add that Beksiński put the works on the Internet so that everybody could copy them easily. Those photomontage works were not signed by the artist. There are no “originals” then and only frauds, having forged the Master’s signature, sell these works (which they first downloaded from the Internet) at auctions as alleged “originals”.

Finally, the last form of expression followed by Beksiński at the end of his life was “computer graphics”. Actually, it is hard to call it “graphics” as in this kind of work he made use of a computer, and not a stone or metal plate. Using this technique, Beksińki drew the first version of the theme directly on the computer (he used “Photoshop” programme) and then distorted it. Just like in the case of the photocopier or computer photomontage, this way the artist created works that were very similar to each other, being variations on the same theme. However, there were also unique, not modified works. Beksiński was going to print only 50 copies of each work, sign and number them and next remove the original from his computer. However, he did not print, sign and number the works straightaway, planning to do it gradually as the prints sold. It happened, though, that shortly afterwards he was murdered, so there are merely several signed and numbered prints, just two, three or four original copies of each. Despite the fact that they are so called “multiples”, each of them, if genuinely signed and numbered (there are also forgeries), is unique, almost equally valuable as the original drawing or painting. The Sixteenth Room is devoted to this form of expression.

Last but not least, I wish to add that I no longer see a need to introduce my Virtual Museum guests into the world of Beksiński by writing about the artist and his works, as thanks to the Internet his fans all over the world know him perfectly well. On the other hand, those who have not had an opportunity to become acquainted with the works of this brilliant artist and who wish to find out something about him, should refer to the two texts contained in the Introduction to the Museum. One of them, written by Tadeusz Nyczek, has been revised and translated into French and English by myself. Today I am publishing this revised French and English version of my Virtual Museum. I would like to mention that the German version of the text does not exist, so German guests must settle for the English or French text by Tadeusz Nyczek in the version that I have revised.

The second text, which this time I recommend to guests visiting the Polish version of my Virtual Museum, is a very good fragment of Ms Anna Kania Saj’s university thesis devoted to the Master.

Finally, “library”, “film library” and “record library” of my Virtual Museum contain numerous materials about Beksiński (chiefly in Polish, but not only) that I strongly encourage my guests to become acquainted with.

February 2010

Piotr Dmochowski