Artist
Max Beckmann
German, 1884–1950
Max Beckmann was a German German Expressionism painter. 95 works are cataloged here, principally at Museum of Modern Art, most of them oil paintings. Max Beckmann was born in Leipzig.
Max Carl Friedrich Beckmann (February 12, 1884 – December 27, 1950) was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement. In the 1920s, he was associated with the New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit), an outgrowth of Expressionism that opposed its introverted emotionalism.
Even when dealing with light subject matter like circus performers, Beckmann often had an undercurrent of moodiness or unease in his works. By the 1930s, his work became more explicit in its horrifying imagery and distorted forms with combination of brutal realism and social criticism, coinciding with the rise of Nazism in Germany.
Works by Max Beckmann
Collections represented
Moments involving Max Beckmann
- Degenerate Art opens at Neue Galerie · 2014 It renewed U.S. museum attention to Nazi attacks on modern art and the afterlives of confiscated works.
- Before the Fall opens at Neue Galerie · 2018 It linked modernist art history to the political collapse of the 1930s and to the afterlife of Nazi cultural policy.
Movements & circles
Artists in a similar vein
