Zdzislaw Beksinski Art and tragic life story

Beksiński is one of the darkest Surrealist artists who created some of the most haunting and disturbing images in the world of art. He began his artistic career in the early 60's, dabbling in photography and photomontage, but soon progressed to painting and sculpture. His earlier paintings were very abstract, but by the 70's he had found his own distinct 'dark fantasy' style, which he stuck with until the late 90's (at which point he began to dabble with digital imaging).

Despite his horrific depictions of transmorgrified skeletons, decay, death, and war, Beksinski was a cheerful and friendly guy, who scorned critics looking for "meaning" in his work. He was just a painter doing his thing, which just happened to be capturing and putting to canvas some of the strangest and most dreamlike images of morbid evil ever known to man.

In 1998, after three decades of prominence and critical acclaim, Zdzislaw suffered the tragic loss of his wife Zofia, and a year later discovered the body of his son Tomasz, who committed suicide on Christmas Eve. Beksinski never fully recovered from his losses, and in 2005 he was stabbed 17 times and killed by two teenage kids. One of the murderers, Robert Kupiec, had been a friend of the family, and later it was revealed that Beksinski had refused him a loan of about $100 right before the assault.