Zdzislaw Beksinski’s Paintings of the “Fantastic Period” as an Expression of Early Childhood Experience

Abstract

This article is an attempt to indicate possibilities for the interpretation of Zdzisław Beksiński’s work, based on selected examples of paintings from the so-called "fantastic period". A grotesque look at art, which would explain the style of the artist's paintings, so compulsively using the language of de formation, attaining alarming degeneration, is a look from the generally inaccessible, cavernous depths of the subconscious. Thanks to psychoanalysis, art can be read as a representation of the inner world of the creator, who unknowingly embeds the story of his childhood into his work. The direction of the foregoing, represents the position of Alice Miller, a Swiss psychotherapist, in whose opinion knowledge stored in the subconscious is not pure fantasy, but rather an explanation referring to the reality of early childhood.