Limited etching "Love couple I." (1916) by Max Beckmann

Max Beckmann, born in Leipzig in 1884, looks like a solitaire over Max Beckmann 1884-1950 in the vicinity of the avant-garde of his time. While the beginning of the modern age, painting was programmatically led to complete objects, Beckmann joined the art historical tradition and deliberately referred to painting the late 19th century. A recurring motif is the lake, which he once described in a late interview as his "old girlfriend". If he designs it in his beginnings as a mysterious, vital space of existential experience, she changes to the motive of freedom, departure and escape at the time of National Socialism.