Max Beckmann

Lore & Background

Max Beckmann was born into a middle-class family in Leipzig, Saxony. From his youth he pitted himself against the old masters. His traumatic experiences of World War I, in which he volunteered as a medical orderly, coincided with a dramatic transformation of his style from academically correct depictions to a distortion of both figure and space, reflecting his altered vision of himself and humanity. He was discharged after suffering a nervous breakdown. He is known for the self-portraits painted throughout his life, their number and intensity rivaled only by those of Rembrandt and Picasso. Well-read in philosophy and literature, Beckmann also contemplated mysticism and theosophy in search of the 'Self.'

Beckmann enjoyed great success during the Weimar Republic. In 1925, he was selected to teach a master class at the Städelschule Academy of Fine Art in Frankfurt. In 1927, he received the Honorary Empire Prize for German Art and the Gold Medal of the City of Düsseldorf. His fortunes changed with the rise of Adolf Hitler; in 1933, the Nazi government called him a 'cultural Bolshevik' and dismissed him from his teaching position. In 1937, the government confiscated more than 500 of his works from German museums, putting several on display in the Degenerate Art exhibition. The day after Hitler's radio speech about degenerate art, Beckmann left Germany with his second wife, Quappi, for the Netherlands. He lived in self-imposed exile in Amsterdam for ten years, failing to obtain a visa for the United States. In 1944, the Germans attempted to draft him into the army, although he had suffered a heart attack. In 1947, he took a position at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts at Washington University, and later taught at the Brooklyn Museum. He died of a heart attack in New York City in 1950.

Reader's Guide

Max Beckmann's significance lies in his defiant rejection of non-representational painting and his advancement of figurative tradition, even as he absorbed influences from Cézanne, Van Gogh, Blake, Rembrandt, Rubens, and Northern Renaissance artists like Bosch and Bruegel. His work reflects the agonies of Europe in the first half of the 20th century, from the decadent glamor of Weimar cabaret to the brutalities of the Nazis, while also voicing universal themes of terror, redemption, and fate. He reinvented the religious triptych as an allegory of contemporary humanity. His posthumous reputation suffered from his individual artistic path, defying easy categorization. Since the late 20th century, his work has gained increasing international recognition through retrospectives at major museums worldwide. The Saint Louis Art Museum holds the largest public collection of his paintings. He exerted a profound influence on American painters such as Philip Guston and Nathan Oliveira, and on the movement now called American Figurative Expressionism.

Did You Know?

• Beckmann rejected the term 'Expressionist' and the movement itself, despite being classified as one.
• He painted self-portraits throughout his life, rivaling Rembrandt and Picasso in number and intensity.
• The Nazi government confiscated more than 500 of his works from German museums and displayed several in the Degenerate Art exhibition.
• His painting 'Falling Man' (1950) is considered eerily predictive of jumpers from the World Trade Center Towers during the September 11 attacks.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"Quote of Max Beckmann, one from a series of letters he wrote to his wife Minna Beckmann-Tube, being medic soldier at the front of World War 1." — Max Beckmann "[it is] amusing all the same, how the peacetime life we cursed and groaned about now elevates itself with iron logic to the status of paradise.." — Max Beckmann "To me the most important thing [in a picture] is roundness captured in height and breadth. Roundness in the plane, depth in the feeling of the plane." — Max Beckmann "We're continually poring over plans, and the decision is difficult, but it's definitely coming soon. The idea with Barr is not bad and might convince me to take your advice, if B. really does get involved." — Max Beckmann