Max Beckmann – One of the most important German artists of the 20th century

Max Beckmann is one of the most important German artists of the last century figurative style, shaped the painting of the late 19th century

The son of a miller grew up in Leipzig and Braunschweig and from childhood had more interest in watercolors and illustrations, (self) portraits, foreign cultures and art history than in school education; he ran away from boarding school at the age of 15 to apply to the Grand Ducal Saxon Art School in Weimar against the wishes of his parents.

His early-developed anecdotal drawing skills with a touch of the grotesque and his sure sense of form opened doors for him; in his teacher, the Norwegian painter Carl Frithjof Smith, he found, by his own admission, the “only teacher of his life”.

Frithjof Smith's influence on Beckmann's painting style would shape his work for life; he adopted and retained the idea of ​​expressive preliminary drawings from Smith. At the art school in Weimar, however, he also learned modern plein air painting , which the Weimar school had adapted from French Impressionism; at that time, the Weimar school was the most progressive in Germany.

After receiving his commendable diplomas for painting and drawing in 1903, Beckmann went to Paris , studied, read and wrote, was impressed by the work of Paul Cézanne and worked on the preliminary studies for his first major work, “Young Men by the Sea”.

He traveled on to Amsterdam, Scheveningen, and The Hague, visiting the works of Rembrandt, Jan Vermeer , and Frans Hals, and painted landscapes that revealed his desire to transcend the prevailing fashions of the time, Art Nouveau and Japonism. In 1904, he planned to travel to Italy but only made it as far as Geneva. He did, however, visit the still relatively unknown Isenheim Altarpiece in Colmar before settling in Schöneberg near Berlin.

In 1905, during a stay at the seaside, Beckmann "Young Men by the Sea ." In 1906, he participated with this early work in the Weimar exhibition of the Berlin Secession, which led to well-paid portrait commissions. The painting also received the honorary prize of the General German Artists' Association, which included a scholarship at the Villa Romana in Florence.

The up-and-coming artist joined the Berlin Secession , married in the same year and traveled with his wife to Paris and to Florence for a scholarship, where he created further works that would advance his career.

During this period, Beckmann bridged the gap between Impressionism and Neoclassicism in large-format, action-packed paintings, but also produced delicate portraits full of a mysterious atmosphere and incredibly precise drawings. After their time in Florence, the Beckmann family moved in 1907 to a studio house in Berlin-Hermsdorf designed by Beckmann's wife.

The now “established artist” travelled to Paris again in 1908, exhibited abroad for the first time in 1909, created graphic works and his famous double portrait with his wife Minna Beckmann-Tube, and large paintings such as a scene from the sinking of Messina, which placed him in the tradition of Rubens.

Beckmann did not seek the monumental abstraction of Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso , nor did he desire the dissolution of art like Wassily Kandinsky, but, like Lovis Corinth and Max Liebermann, he wanted a contemporary form for practicing figurative painting. With this, he captured the spirit of the times, and he became famous in Germany.

As early as 1910, Beckmann had been elected to the board of the Berlin Secession, but this only led to a lifelong rejection of artists' associations; he left the Secession in 1913 and was a co-founder of the "Free Secession" .

At this time, Beckmann had largely found his style in representational painting; only his collapse in the First World War brought about a fundamental change in his artistic work. The experiences of the war give his style hard contours, and the works of this period ruthlessly show the harshness of the war.

Beckmann settled in Frankfurt-Sachsenhausen and gradually transformed the brutal style of war into a new form of graphic art and painting. The lithograph cycle "Hell" captures the essence of postwar life, but Christian iconography becomes a theme. Beckmann's painting style becomes increasingly expressive, with the means receding further behind the message. He now displays a critical and ironic style of painting, the content becoming more complex and developing its own symbolic language.

Beckmann was now, in the 1920s, at the height of his fame; his work was exhibited in major European cities, he illustrated several books for the Piper publishing house, and a monograph about him was published in 1924. That same year he met Mathilde Kaulbach, who became his new wife and a frequent model for his paintings.

Further travels to France and Italy and intensive studies of Theosophy, Gnostic and ancient Indian teachings contributed to the development of his artistic style; he also developed a new approach to color in his paintings.

In 1925, Beckmann took over a master studio at the art school of the Frankfurt Städel Museum; however, his own paintings, “Double Portrait Carnival”, “Italian Fantasy” and “Galleria Umberto”, show a disquieting feeling and reveal something that Beckmann biographer Stephan Reimertz would call the “artist’s foreface”.

In reality, the “Golden Age” was soon to end: in 1928 Beckmann was once again comprehensively honored in Germany, with the Reich Prize of Honor for German Art, the Golden Medal of Düsseldorf and a major retrospective in the Kunsthalle Mannheim, and in 1930 six of his paintings were shown at the Venice Biennale , but Beckmann was already being fiercely attacked by the National Socialist press.

In 1933, Beckmann was dismissed without notice from the Städelschule art school. His prominent position was now limited to the "Degenerate Art" that swept across Germany. Beckmann withdrew to Berlin and expressed his dismay and fear in anecdotal paintings such as "Oxen Stable," "The Little Fish," and self-portraits with a black cap or glass sphere. Even sculptural works like "Man in the Dark" became indictments of the suddenly unwanted artist.

In 1937 , after hearing Hitler's speech at the opening of the "Great German Art Exhibition in Munich" on the radio, Max Beckmann fled to Amsterdam. He wanted nothing more to do with Germany. In , during his exile, he painted desperate self-portraits such as "The Liberated," in which he breaks his chains, and enigmatic paintings and triptychs that explored his fate. In 1939, Beckmann applied for a visa to the United States but was forced to remain in Amsterdam for the entire war, where he maintained contact with the German resistance.

It wasn't until 1947 that Max and Mathilde Beckmann received permission to enter the USA, where Beckmann was appointed professor at the Art School of Washington University in St. Louis. From 1949 onwards, he held a teaching position at the Art School of the Brooklyn Museum in New York. Beckmann also undertook journeys across the USA, teaching in California and Colorado.

In December 1950, Beckmann died of a sudden heart attack in New York at the age of 66; his tenth triptych, “Amazons”, remained unfinished .

The paintings of the artist, whom Heinz Berggruen describes as “the most important German artist of the 20th century alongside Ernst Ludwig Kirchner” , still provoke thought today – and they are incredibly valuable today; his “Self-Portrait with Horn”, for example, was sold for $22.6 million, and the “View of Suburbs by the Sea near Marseille” was the highest-paid German painting ever in 2009.

From both perspectives, we would be delighted if you found a “little Beckmann” in your attic and uploaded it here to Kunstplaza ; a print is of course also well suited for engaging with this fascinating art .

Numerous artworks by Max Beckmann on Pinterest