Max Beckmann - Early interest in art and foreign cultures
Max Beckmann was born in Leipzig on 12 February 1884. He was the late third child of a miller and had two considerably older siblings, Margarethe and Richard. At the age of eleven, when he had just moved from junior school to the grammar school, his father died. Max Beckmann had little enthusiasm for school but was interested in art history and foreign cultures from an early age. He produced his first self portrait at the age of 14 and painted the landscape of Lake Thun. He ran away from private boarding school to enroll at the Grand Ducal-Saxon Academy of Fine Arts in Weimar where his first teacher was the Norwegian portrait painter Carl Frithjof Smith. In retrospect, Beckmann paid the highest respect to Frithjof Smith and described his as the only real teacher of his artistic career. His acquaintance with the artists Ugi Battenberg and Minna Tube also proved formative and they became lifelong friends.
Solitary decision for representationalism
Max Beckmann travelled to Amsterdam, The Hague and Scheveningen, attended the private Colarossi Academy in Paris, and was deeply affected by the art of the versatile Frenchman, Paul Cézanne. But artists such as Rembrandt van Rijn, Edvard Munch, Frans Hals, Jan Vermeer and Gerard ter Borch all left their mark on Beckmann’s early work. He was greatly supported by the publisher Reinhard Piper and the art dealer Israel Ber Neumann who enabled him considerable fame and reach in the pre-war period, although he kept his distance from the established artists’ associations following various conflicts and disagreements and persisted with figurative painting, which ran counter to contemporary currents. Beckmann volunteered for medical service in the First World War, but a nervous breakdown forced him to leave prematurely and to seek medical attention. He did not want to fight: he viewed the French as artistic role models and the Russians as the people of Dostoyevsky, whom he called a friend. After the war, he became heavily involved in politics and theosophical secret teachings.
International success as solitary sage
Max Beckmann thought of himself as a world interpreter, who uncovered hidden connections with his art and opened them up for his audience. He enjoyed the role of solitary sage who could not be assigned to any community or style direction, but who always persisted in going his own way. His print graphic works Die Hölle and Der Jahrmarkt garnered much attention, and he also held many solo exhibitions in the inter-war period. The National Socialist takeover brought Beckmann’s ascent to an abrupt end: His art was classed as degenerate, and he was forced to give up his teaching position at the Frankfurt Städelschule and helplessly looked on as his pictures were confiscated from museums. He travelled to the USA via Amsterdam where he was able to pursue his earlier successes and assumed several teaching contracts. Max Beckmann received prizes and honours for his art including the Preis der Villa Romana in 1906, an honorary award at the Venice Biennale in 1950 and an Honorary Doctorate from the Washington University in St. Louis that same year. Alongside his pictorial work, he produced numerous writings.
Max Beckmann died on 27 December 1950 in New York.
There is still great interest in his work: From September 2020 to March 2021, The Hamburger Kunsthalle presented a major exhibition on the theme Max Beckmann: weiblich–männlich which focused on Beckmann’s exploration of the diverse, charged, and often contradictory gender roles, underpinning his status as one of the most important artists of the modern age.
Max Beckmann - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz: