Rating and value of paintings by Zdzisław Beksiński

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Artist's rating and value

Zdzisław Beksiński is a Polish painter whose surrealist and fantastical works are quite prized on the auction market.

The updated value of his paintings reflects a considerable rise in recent years. Thus, the works of Zdzisław Beksiński are prized by collectors.

In the auction room, it is his surrealist paintings that meet with great success. Thus, the prices at which his works sell range from €20 to €350,000 a consequent delta but one that speaks volumes about the value that can be attributed to his works.

In 2021, his oil on canvas Postac, dating from 1978 and depicting a figure that is half vampire and half ghost against an apocalyptic background, sold for €350,000 whereas it was estimated at €110,000 to €150,000.

Order of value from the most basic to the most prestigious

The artist's style and works

With a deeply dark and unique style, Zdzisław Beksiński is often associated with dystopian art and the expression of an apocalyptic, nightmarish vision.

His works delve into themes of death, time and the erosion of flesh, exploring the twists and turns of existential angst and humanity's collective fears.

Beksiński is distinguished by his skill in handling strangely saturated colors and rich textures, which mingle with gaunt silhouettes and desolate landscapes, creating an atmosphere both hypnotic and disturbing.

Recognizable by their meticulous composition, Beksiński's works captivate by their visual power: ghostly figures, monumental and labyrinthine architectures, often distorted, emerge in scenes where we feel the echo of a dull and omnipresent anxiety.

The artist relentlessly explores the materiality of space and decomposition, employing techniques such as scraping and mixing mediums, which add an unsettling, immersive textural depth to his canvases.

His unique style, which flirts with surrealism and horror, is never a simple illustration of fear, but a visual reflection on the fragility of existence.

Beksiński makes each work an invitation to contemplate human finitude in a universe where anguish becomes almost tangible, capturing the symbols of collective dread in an inimitable artistic language.

His stylistic vein naturally connects with surrealist artists such as René Magritte or Salvador Dali, but also Symbolist artists such as Gustave Doré.

The life of Zdzisław Beksiński

Zdzisław Beksiński was born into a modest family in Sanok, Poland, in 1929. From an early age, he developed a passion for art, distinguishing himself by his taste for dark, mysterious worlds. He studied architecture in Krakow, a course that would influence the rigor and structure of his compositions.

On his return to Sanok, he took up photography, sculpture and then painting, constantly seeking to express the inner visions that obsessed him.

From the 1970s, Beksiński devoted himself fully to painting, developing a unique style where desert landscapes rub shoulders with ghostly figures and nightmarish scenes. These early exhibitions captivate the public, propelling the artist to the heart of the Polish art scene.

Fascinated by masters such as Bosch and Goya, he relentlessly explores universal themes such as death and anguish, translated into works that seem to emerge from a dark dream.

In the 1980s, Beksiński's notoriety grew beyond Poland's borders, notably in Japan, where his style was greeted with keen interest. However, he remains detached from any quest for fame and continues to create in isolation, faithful to his visual universe.

This international success does not distance him from his personal approach: Beksiński remains faithful to his inner obsessions and apocalyptic vision.

In 2005, Beksiński is murdered in his home, marking a tragic end to a life dedicated to art.

Despite this brutal demise, his work endures and continues to attract attention, his singular style remaining a benchmark in contemporary art for its uncompromising exploration of human darkness.

Focus on Untitled (76), Zdzislaw Beksinski

Disturbingly intense, this untitled work by Zdzisław Beksiński immediately captivates with its striking depiction of human suffering and alienation. Here, Beksiński unveils a face with indistinct, almost ghostly features, imprisoned by a skeletal hand with long, gnarled fingers.

The texture of this hand, veined and ridged, seems to be that of a being both alive and decomposed, posing a grip that appears almost forced, as if seeking to silence the central figure or prevent it from breathing.

Tones of blue and violet add to this cold atmosphere, creating a contrast with the yellowish, blurred background that envelops the scene in an ethereal, almost radioactive light.

In this painting, Beksiński tackles the depths of human anguish, exploring themes of death, imposed silence and psychological deterioration.

This face smothered by a ghostly hand may symbolize an inner cry, stifled and without hope of release, as if the being depicted were trapped in a state of intense inner suffering.

The grainy texture and lightly saturated color of the skin evoke decaying matter, reinforcing the idea of the soul crumbling under the weight of this spectral grip.

Beksiński, in this work, invites us to contemplate dread at its most intimate, most silent.

The lack of detail in the face, with its smooth, almost unreal surface, prevents any personalization, creating a universal figure into which viewers might project their own fears and anxieties.

The contrasting but subtle treatment of light and textures makes the scene palpable, while at the same time lending it an unreal aspect, typical of the artist's dystopian style.

This ambient blur seems to materialize doubt, uncertainty, as if every detail were dissolving before the viewer's eyes, unable to fully grasp the significance of this visual pain.

Recognizable among a thousand, Beksiński's composition feeds on his inimitable style where horror rubs shoulders with art, where every element is thought out to provoke a visceral reaction in the observer.

It's a work that seems to invite us to confront our own terrors, to plumb the abysses of human frailty and find therein a kind of unsettling beauty.

In silence, the work whispers truths about the human condition, mortality and ephemerality, capturing in a frozen instant the very essence of existential anguish.

Zdzisław Beksiński's legacy in art history

Borne by a singular vision, Zdzisław Beksiński has left a dark yet fascinating imprint on art history, marking generations of artists with his exploration of fear and human existence.

Heir to an inimitable visual language, he bequeaths a body of work that transcends time, where each canvas becomes a meditation on the dread and mystery of the human condition.

Beksiński's works, with their spectral figures and desolate landscapes, resonate like timeless echoes in the contemporary art world, inspiring an aesthetic that flirts with the abysses of the human soul.

His legacy extends far beyond painting, touching on cinema, fantasy literature and the digital arts, where his nightmarish visions continue to captivate.

His way of depicting labyrinthine architectures and gaunt silhouettes has opened up a new visual space, conducive to explorations of humanity's shadowy zones.

Artists, filmmakers and designers find his universe an inexhaustible source of inspiration, drawing from his depictions of the apocalypse a raw material that is both fascinating and terrifying.

With deep textures, saturated colors and disconcertingly rigorous compositions, Beksiński created an art that pushed the boundaries of traditional painting, opening the way to an inexhaustible dialogue between matter and spirit.

By capturing collective fear and the decay of existence, he gave the visual arts a language to express universal anxieties. Even today, his legacy remains an invitation to explore the unknown, anchoring his work in a singular and enduring place in contemporary art.

Know the artist : Zdzisław Beksiński

His signature

Not all of Zdzisław Beksiński's works are signed.

Although there are variations, here is a first example of his signature:

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