100 drawings and 100 photos by Zdzisław Beksiński will be on display from August 18 at the temporary exhibition at the Nowa Huta Cultural Center in Krakow. The artist’s permanent painting gallery is also open during the summer holidays, informed the institution.
Zdzisław Beksiński drew all his life, changing styles and techniques, creating the corresponding series of graphics and individual sketches. At the temporary exhibition in the Nowa Huta Cultural Center, visitors will see works from 1956 – 2000, created in a variety of techniques and formats.
“Even when he became a famous painter, whose paintings in the 70s and 80s almost all disappeared from exhibitions, being purchased for the solemn amounts for those times, he did not stop drawing. Yes, there were times of more intensive and less intensive creation on paper. He also changed the techniques and styles of drawing. Of all his artistic activities, it was in drawing that he demonstrated the widest range of possibilities,” wrote the critic Tadeusz Nyczek in the introduction to the catalog “Rysunek” (“Drawing”).
Beksiński is also considered to be one of the most revealing photographers of the 1950s. In this field, critics classified him as one of the avant-garde artists. In 1959, he completely gave up the camera as a tool of artistic creation in favor of painting, drawing, and sculpture. The photographs presented at the exhibition are a cross-sectional collection – from portraits of his wife Zofia, through photos of her hometown Sanok, to abstract textures and collages.