Max Beckmann
Biography of German Expressionist Painter, Printmaker and Sculptor.
Visual Arts Guide

Max Beckmann (1884–1950)

German artist Max Beckman was a leading modernist painter, printmaker and sculptor. Although described as a German Expressionist, he rejected this classification. He preferred to align himself with the New Objectivity movement (Neue Sachlichkeit), which rejected the introverted emotionalism of Expressionism. Generally he is overlooked, even today, because he never quite became one of the Modernist 'gang', and his style was difficult to pigeonhole. Even so, some art critics consider him to be a major influence on the history of art in the 20th century. Active across most of the painting genres, his most notable works include The Dream, 1921 (St Louis Art Museum); Departure, 1932 (Museum of Modern Art, New York); Journey on the Fish, 1934 (Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart) and Carnival, 1942 (University of Iowa Museum of Art).

Beckmann was born in Leipzig, Germany to a middle class family. At the age of 16 he began to study art with the Norwegian artist Carl Frithjof Smith, at the Grossherzogliche Kunstschule in Weimar. His drawing and painting skills were evident from an early stage. In the pre-war years he painted biblical scenes and landscapes with bridges and houses. In 1912 he had his first solo exhibition at the Kunstverein in Magdeburg. In 1914 he volunteered for the Medical Corps of the German army, but was discharged a year later due to ill health. However the experiences he did have during the war, shaped his view of the world and his art.

Beckmann produced beautiful, sober, expressive oil paintings, strong in contour and colour. He painted many self-portraits, which are full of symbolism, and only rivalled by Picasso and Rembrandt in number. He constantly strove to find the hidden spiritual dimension of his subjects and to portray this on canvas. Other images he painted include those of the Weimar Republic's cabaret culture which captured the decadent glamour of the era.

Paintings from this time include: Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, 1917 (St.Louis Art Museum); The Night, 1918 (Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf); Family Picture, 1920 (St.Louis Art Museum); The Iron Footbridge, 1922 (Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen); Dancing Bar in Baden-Baden, 1923 (Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen); Carnival: The Artist and His Wife, 1925 (Collection RN Ketterer, Campione, Switzerland); Self-Portrait in Tuxedo, 1927 (Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University); Rugby Players, 1929 (Wilhelm-Lehmbruck-Museum, Duisburg) and Party in Paris, 1931 (Guggenheim Museum, New York).

From the 1930's onwards Beckmann’s works often carried references to the brutality of the Nazi party, and in so doing captured a universal theme of terror, redemption and fate. A master of fine art painting, his use of the colour black (one of the most difficult pigments to make 'interesting') compares to Manet, and his understanding of the human condition is often compared to Rembrandt.

He 'reinvented' the use of the triptych and delved into the past, specifically medieval painting and stained glass for inspiration. Examples of his triptych's include: Temptation, 1936 (Bayerische Staatsgemaldesammlungen, Munich); The Actors, 1942 (Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts); Carnival, 1943 (State University of Iowa) and Blindman's Buff, 1945 (Minneapolis Institute of Arts). Other important works include Temptation, 1936; Released, 1937 (Private collection) and Birds' Hell, 1938 (St Louis Art Museum). His work was warmly received, and as a mark of his achievements, he received the Honorary Empire Prize for German Art and the Gold Medal of the City of Dusseldorf in 1927. And in 1928 the National Gallery of Berlin acquired his painting Self-Portrait in Tuxedo.

However, in 1937, along with many other artists, his work was classified as 'degenerate' by the Nazi party and was taken out of public exhibit. The day after, he went into voluntary exile and moved to Amsterdam, where he remained until 1947, living in poverty, waiting desperately for a visa for the United States. He never returned to Germany again. Finally, later that year he received a visa and a job offer to teach at the School of Fine Arts in Washington University, Saint Louis.

In 1949 he was awarded first prize in the exhibition 'Painting in the United States' at the Carnegie Institute. A major retrospective of his work was held in America shortly before he died in 1950 of a heart attack.

Many of his later paintings mirror American landscapes, skyscrapers and mid-American characters. Despite his apparent failure to break into the ranks of the most famous artists, the New York art dealer Richard Feigen describes Beckmann as 'the greatest artist of the 20th Century in Germany — if not in the world'. Outside of a major retrospective of his works at the New York Museum of Modern Art in 1964, his work was rarely seen outside of the United States after his death. This may partly be explained by the difficulty curators have in classifying his work. However, this changed in the 1990's when the principle museums of Rome, Valenica, Madrid, Zurich and Munich exhibited his work. Frankfurt and Amsterdam followed in 2006 and 2007.

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