Max Beckmann - Hardcover

Bieber, Susanne; Buenger, Barbara; Haxthausen, Charles; Lloyd, Jill; Peter, Nina; Westheider, Ortrud; Kruszynski, Anette; Storr, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0870702416 ISBN 13: 9780870702419

Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2003

Synopsis

Max Beckmann was among the greatest painters of the 20th century, yet no retrospective of his work has been mounted in the art capitals of New York, London, and Paris in over 30 years. Perhaps the lapse of attention has to do with the importance of abstraction in 20th-century art, and Beckmann's work is always figurative, simultaneously muscular and enigmatic and has enormous and unsettling power. Beckmann began his career as a naturalist and Symbolist in the period before World War I. After the war he developed a unique pictorial style that mixed expressionist color and gesture, mythological and mystical allegory, and the harsh new objectivity of his portrayal of modern life throughout the Nazi reign of terror. A prolific artist in painting, drawing, and printmaking--as well as a powerful sculptor--Beckmann created mysterious images and dense tableaux of unparalleled intensity and complexity during an odyssey that took him from his native Germany to Paris, Amsterdam, St. Louis, and New York. A new examination of Beckmann's role and reputation during the first half of the 20th century has been eagerly awaited. Making use of new scholarship and previously unavailable research materials, this book sheds light on Beckmann's work and his influence on and interactions with the artists of his day. Essays include discussions of Beckmann's Frankfurt cityscapes, his pictures from Italy, his triptychs, his group portraits, and his relationship with cultural politics in the 1920s and 1930s; texts and interviews by artists Leon Golub and Ellsworth Kelly; curator Robert Storr on "The Beckmann Effect"; and artist William Kentridge on Beckmann's Death. This sumptuous volume is published on the occasion of the retrospective exhibition mounted jointly by the Tate Modern, Centre Georges Pompidou, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. It is the first comprehensive exhibition of Beckmann's work to be seen in the United States since 1984, and the first in New York since 1964.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Even now, some forty-five years after his death, the works created by Max Beckmann exert an intense influence on contemporary art. His piercing self-portraits, his enigmatic yet compelling triptychs, his incisive prints all have earned him a well-deserved reputation as a creator of provocative work that is both emotionally and intellectually stimulating. Born in Leipzig, Germany, in 1884, Beckmann lived an international life, studying and working in Weimar, Frankfurt, Paris, and Berlin. Successful almost from his earliest days as a professional artist, he exhibited work to acclaim throughout Europe and America. With the Nazis' rise to power, his style and his subjects became dangerously out of fashion, and he was forced into exile - first to Amsterdam, where he spent World War II, and eventually to the United States, where he died, in New York, in 1950. Although some scholars have categorized Beckmann as a German Expressionist, he always resisted belonging to any group, asserting that "the greatest danger which threatens mankind is collectivization". He also resisted abstraction, remaining passionately committed to the figure throughout his long career. His paintings have much to say about sex, politics, and religion - which is no doubt why they so outraged the Nazis and no doubt why they have remained so absorbing to new generations of admirers.

About the Author:

Max Beckmann was born in Leipzig in 1884 to a family of farmers. He began his formal studies in 1900 at the Weimar Art Academy and moved to Paris soon after with his new wife. Drafted into World War I, he was deemed unfit to serve in the second, and spent the war years in Germany, outlawed by Hitler from exhibiting his "degenerate" paintings. After the war he came to America, taking up the post of painter in residence at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. In the late 1940s he moved to Manhattan, where he died of a heart attack en route to see his work in a show at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on December 27, 1950.

About this edition

• Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art, New York
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0870702416
• ISBN 13: 9780870702419
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304
• Editor: Rainbird Sean