Synopses & Reviews
The existential expressionist: Painting the struggle of mind vs. matter Max Beckmann (1884-1950) found his central theme in the loneliness of the twentieth century man, threatened by catastrophe and torn between materialism and freedom of mind and spirit. His early pictures showed the influence of Impressionism, with a preponderance of biblical, historical, and allegorical themes. World War I made a deep impression on him: somewhere between Expressionism and Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), the succinct forms and hard contours in his memorable paintings and graphic works showed man at the limit of physical and mental endurance. Later, the harshness and severity of his style softened and his colors became more radiant, but the monumentality remained. Theater, circus, and music hall became parables of human existence.
Beckmann’s work is concerned with the fundamental conditions of human existence and the tragic entanglement of the human being dependant on the whims of gods, sexuality, and society. His relentless search for knowledge, his uncompromising commitment to the picture, and his belief in the power of its form and color give his work its distinctive, fascinating character, and have earned him a high-ranking place among the artists of the twentieth century.
This monograph features more than 180 images of works from 1907 to 1950, including many of Beckmann’s famous self-portraits and triptychs (such as Temptation of 1936/1937). Biographical essays cover his war years, the twenties in Frankfurt, his exile years in Amsterdam, and his emigration to the United States where he died; additional material includes photographs on which many of his paintings are based, several exhibition shots, and images from other artists as Pablo Picasso, Eugène Delacroix, Max Ernst, and Edvard Munch that visualize Beckmann’s inspirations and context.
Synopsis
The existential expressionist: Painting the struggle of mind vs. matter Max Beckmann (1884-1950) found his central theme in the loneliness of the twentieth century man, threatened by catastrophe and torn between materialism and freedom of mind and spirit. His early pictures showed the influence of Impressionism, with a preponderance of biblical, historical, and allegorical themes. World War I made a deep impression on him: somewhere between Expressionism and Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), the succinct forms and hard contours in his memorable paintings and graphic works showed man at the limit of physical and mental endurance. Later, the harshness and severity of his style softened and his colors became more radiant, but the monumentality remained. Theater, circus, and music hall became parables of human existence.
Beckmann's work is concerned with the fundamental conditions of human existence and the tragic entanglement of the human being dependant on the whims of gods, sexuality, and society. His relentless search for knowledge, his uncompromising commitment to the picture, and his belief in the power of its form and color give his work its distinctive, fascinating character, and have earned him a high-ranking place among the artists of the twentieth century.
This monograph features more than 180 images of works from 1907 to 1950, including many of Beckmann's famous self-portraits and triptychs (such as Temptation of 1936/1937). Biographical essays cover his war years, the twenties in Frankfurt, his exile years in Amsterdam, and his emigration to the United States where he died; additional material includes photographs on which many of his paintings are based, several exhibition shots, and images from other artists as Pablo Picasso, Eugene Delacroix, Max Ernst, and Edvard Munch that visualize Beckmann's inspirations and context.
Synopsis
Max Beckmann (1884-1950) found his central theme in the angst of 20th-century interwar experience. With a style between Expressionism and New Objectivity, later softened into more radiant naturalism, the painter and printmaker probed the strife of the human condition in portraits, self-portraits, and allegorical tableau. Beckmann's early pictures showed the influence of Impressionism, with a leaning towards biblical, historical, and allegorical themes. Serving in the medical corps in Belgium during World War I, he was discharged after a nervous breakdown, and would return to art with anguished new strategies of distortion, angularity, and exaggerated color. In chaotic scenes of the circus, cabarets, carnivals, and candelit chambers, he emphasized the theatricality of life and seemed to foretell the doom of the interwar Weimar Republic with his cast of lurid characters, often peppered with ominous fragments of myth, biblical reference, and opaque allegory. Beckmann's Departure is the first in a series of triptych paintings recalling the juxtaposed scenes of heaven and hell, sin and salvation typical to medieval or Renaissance altarpieces. Though the artist denied that Departure had specific meaning, it is often regarded as an emblematic response to the rise of National Soclalism, painted at the time that the Nazis fired Beckmann from his professorship at the Frankfurt Art Academy. This monograph features more than 180 of Beckmann's from 1907 to 1950, including many of his most famous self-portraits and triptychs. Biographical essays cover his war years, the 1920s in Frankfurt, his Nazi exile years in Amsterdam, and his emigration to the United States. Bonus additional material includes photographs on which many of his paintings are based, several exhibition shots, and images from other artists as Pablo Picasso, Eug ne Delacroix, Max Ernst, and Edvard Munch that visualize Beckmann's inspirations and context.
About the Author
Reinhard Spieler, born 1964, studied art history, classical archaeology and modern German literature in Munich, Berlin and Paris. He received his Ph.D. in 1997, with a doctoral thesis on Max Beckmann's triptychs. He has been director of the Wilhelm Hack Museum in Ludwigshafen on the Rhine since 2007 and teaches at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and at the universities of Düsseldorf, Bern and Heidelberg. He has published frequently on early modern and contemporary art.