Lot 268 D

“Beckmann wished to achieve the most precise possible transfer of reality into a valid optical form, which - while reflecting its time - nonetheless moves on from there to universally valid statements, to works that can be understood independently of the situation contemporary to their creation.” (Carla Schulz-Hoffmann, “So lächerlich gleichgültig wird einem auf die Dauer dieses ganze politische Gangstertum und man befindet sich am wohlsten auf der Insel seiner Seele”, in: exhib. cat., Max Beckmann: Exil in Amsterdam, Amsterdam/Munich 2007/2008, p. 29).
In 1933 Max Beckmann, one of Germany's most distinctive contemporary painters, lost his teaching position at the Städelschule and moved to the more anonymous metropolis of Berlin. Before the end of the year, he had been prohibited from exhibiting his art, and his works were removed from the museums. Facing increasing oppression from the Nazis, Beckmann left Germany and emigrated to Amsterdam with his wife in 1937.
The present drawing “Lesende Frau” was created during the last year of his exile, before his departure from the US in 1947. In terms of its formal aesthetics and its graphic concept, it is certainly to be seen as closely related to “Day and Dream”, his final series of prints published in New York by Curt Valentin: in the monumentality of the female figure - for example, in the fifth lithograph, “Kriechende Frau” - or in the comparable clothing in the eleventh sheet, “Der Morgen” (see Hofmaier 361, 367).
Casually stretched out on a bedstead, the “Lesende” is turned towards the viewer with an interplay between the Sibyl-like concealment of her face and the openness of her bared breast. The burning candle may not just make her enlightening reading possible: it may also be understood as an erotic allusion in the iconographic tradition of Dutch genre painting - and the lost slipper emphasises this aspect.
Beckmann himself seems to have been so convinced by the quality of this remarkable drawing that he honoured it with its own entry in his journal. Two days before New Year's, on 29 December 1946, he notes:
“made drawing 'Woman reading in bed by candlelight' …” (Tagebücher 1940-1950, Munich/Vienna 1979, p. 186).