Max Beckmann

Max Beckmann, (b. February 12, 1884 in Leipzig, Germany, d. December 28, 1950 in New York City), was a German painter, draftsman, graphic artist, sculptor, writer and thinker.

Themes and Techniques

Many of Max Beckmann?s paintings, however, seem to make specific reference to the particular agonies of modern times. We can find the grim as well as glamorous world of Europe in the Twenties; the brutalities and degradations perpetrated by the Nazis; the silent closeness of underground conspirators. But his subjects and symbols have larger meaning, voicing universal themes of terror and destruction, bewilderment and frustration, faith and belief, love and hate and the mysteries of eternity, fate and dualism.

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Unlike many of his contemporaries, Beckmann rejected non-representational painting. In his clear and purified abstraction, he never challenged the concrete object; thus becoming one of the most sympathetic portraitists of his century. In keeping with the tradition of the technical and spiritual masters of painting, Beckmann took up the heritage of Van Gogh, Blake, Rembrandt, Rubens and the Magic Realists of the late Middle Ages, such as Bosch, Brueghel and Grünewald. The artist created a very personal but genuine version of modernism. Very few painters other than Beckmann were able to combine tradition and modern art.

Related Topics:
Non-representational painting - Abstraction - Van Gogh - Blake - Rembrandt - Rubens - Middle Age - Bosch - Brueghel - Grünewald - Modernism

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According to New York art dealer Richard L Feigen, Max Beckmann can be described as ?the greatest artist of the 20th Century in Germany -- if not in the world.?

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