Max Beckman: biography, personal life, creativity

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Max Carl Friedrich Beckmann (1884 - 1950) - German painter, graphic artist, sculptor, known for the strong figurative style of his works. A prominent representative of expressionism and new materiality, Max Beckmann became world famous in the 1920s, his numerous exhibitions were held in Berlin, Dresden, Paris, New York.

In Germany, his work was awarded the Honorary Imperial Prize, and the city of Düsseldorf awarded the artist a Gold Medal for his contribution to German art. As a successful artist, he became a professor at the Frankfurt State Academy, taught at the Städel Art Institute and gave master classes at other educational institutions. But with the coming of the Nazis to power, the artist was removed from office, the new government declared Max Beckmann's works hostile to the state, and his paintings were exhibited in Munich at the "Degenerate Art" exhibition. This exposition forced the artist to leave his homeland, where he did not return even after the fall of fascism.

Education

Max Beckmann was born on February 12, 1884years in Leipzig, was the third child in the family of the manager of the mill agency. His first surviving works are a watercolor illustration for a fairy tale from 1896 and the first self-portrait from 1897.

Since 1900, Beckmann studied at the Weimar Grand Ducal School of Art, a modern and liberal institution, where the direction of impressionism and plein air work were practiced.

From 1901, Beckman studied in the class of the Norwegian portrait painter Carl Smith, whom he considered his only teacher. Already at that period, the characteristic forms inherent in Beckman, a tendency to ironic depiction and the grotesque, appeared.

The beginning of the creative path

In 1903, the young artist went to Paris, where he visited the private academy of Colarossi, tried his hand at pointillism, and created preparatory works for the first exhibitions. In Paris, he is particularly impressed by the works of Paul Cezanne.

Then Beckmann travels to Amsterdam, The Hague, Scheveningen, where he paints landscapes, studies the works of Terborch, Rembrandt, Vermeer. In 1904, Max went on a trip to Italy, which ended in Geneva. The manner of execution of his summer seascapes is opposed to European Art Nouveau and Japaneseism. In some works of that time, an individual style appears, expressed by the fragmentation of the composition.

Family and early work

In 1904, Beckmann moved to Berlin, where he established his studio. In the summer of 1905, influenced by the work of Luca Signorelli and Hans von Maris, the artist Max Beckmann creates his firstmasterpieces "Young people by the sea". A year later, for this picture, he received the Villa Romana award. In the same year, with two works, the artist takes part in the 11th exhibition of the Berlin Secession.

After his mother's death in 1906, Beckmann, in the tradition of Edvard Munch, depicts scenes of death on his two canvases. After marrying Minna Tuba, a college friend, singer and artist, he travels with his wife to Paris and then to Florence as a Villa Romana scholarship holder. There, the artist paints portraits of Minna Tube, one of which is in the Hamburg Kunsthalle Museum.

Beckmann designs his house in the northern district of Berlin, where the couple moved in 1907. In the same period, the artist joins the Berlin Secession. Combining impressionism and neoclassicism in his works, he increasingly depicts violent scenes of catastrophes on large-scale canvases. At the same time, Beckman carefully treats subtle atmospheric transmission in interior images and the portrait genre, especially for self-portraits. Drawing has always been the basis of Beckman's art, and in those years he created graphic images in the spirit of the perfection of the old masters.

In 1908, the couple went to Paris, and in the autumn the son Peter appeared in the family. The following year, Beckman's first solo exhibition took place abroad. In 1909, the artist creates a “Double Portrait” in the style of Gainsborough, depicting himself and his wife in the picture. With this work, Max Beckmann erected a monument to his relationship with Minna Beckmann-Tube - his lover, life partner and colleague.

Pre-war glory

The German-American art dealer Israel Ber Neumann contributed a lot to the artist's popularity by organizing advertising, exhibitions and sales of works by Beckmann, whose fame reached its peak in 1913. In 1914, the 29-year-old artist left the Berlin Secession and founded the Free Secession.

The artist continued his search for a modern form of figurative painting. He protected his work from radical abstractionism, expressionism and futurism. Proclaiming in March 1912 that the laws of art are eternal and unchanging, Beckmann set himself the goal of expanding the heritage of traditional genres of mythology through symbolism. The transfer of space and light in his works of that time follows the principles of classical art, and the painting style gravitates towards impressionism. In 1919, with the painting "Night", Max Beckmann became one of the founders of the movement, which was called "new objectivity" or "magic realism", and later designated the term "new materiality".

After 1910, Beckmann distanced himself from art associations, but continued to participate in major annual exhibitions in Mannheim (1913), Dresden (1927, where he was a member of the jury), Cologne (1929), Stuttgart (1930), Essen (1931), Koenigsberg and Danzig (1932), Hamburg (1936).

War

In World War I, Beckman volunteered to work as a military paramedic. In 1914 he served as a volunteer medical assistant on the eastern front, and the nextyear in Flanders. His drawings of that period reflect the severity of military life, they began to form a new, rigidly defined style of Beckman. The state of mind experienced by the artist in the war leads to a mental breakdown, and he briefly goes to serve in the Imperial Institute of Hygiene, and then finally moves to Frankfurt.

The temporary phase of his nervous breakdown was the beginning of a new creativity. Reflecting the horrors of war, the ruthless style is transformed into graphics and painting, embodied in self-portraits, lithographic cycles "Hellish War" and "Post-War Reality".

About 1916 Max Beckmann's art direction changes from Impressionism to Expressionism. The works were characterized by "densely packed" compositions with dynamic, sharply and sharply exaggerated figures. The main ideas of the works are becoming more complex and esoteric, it is difficult to understand them without knowing the sources to which the artist turned.

Post-war activities

With the end of the war, the content of the work was increasingly determined by the theme of theatre, circus, cabaret and carnival. An artistic breakthrough occurred in the 1920s - numerous exhibitions were held in Berlin, Dresden, Paris, New York and made the work of Max Beckmann famous. Publisher Reinhard Peiper published books illustrated by Beckmann, and in 1924 his long monograph was published.

In Vienna, the artist meets 20-year-old Mathilde Kaulbach. Divorced from his first wife, he marries Matilda, whom he callsViennese nickname Kwappi. Beckman paints many portraits of her, making the young wife one of the most depicted women in art history.

Since 1925, the artist travels to Italy and Paris again, where he receives wide public recognition. Since 1925 he lectured at the School of Applied Arts in Frankfurt am Main, and in 1929 he became a professor. In 1928, his fame in Germany reached its peak. The Kunsthalle Mannheim hosts a large retrospective of Beckmann's work compiled by Gustav F. Hartlaub. Oil paintings, watercolors, pastels and drawings by the artist from 1906-1930 were shown. Beckmann receives the Imperial Prize of Honor and the city of Düsseldorf awards him the Gold Medal.

At the International Exhibition of the Carnegie Institution in Pittsburgh, The Lodge received an award. In August 1930, a personal foreign exhibition of Max Beckmann was successfully held, and a month later an exposition of his printed graphics followed in the Art Museum of Basel, which was then exhibited in Zurich. In 1931, the artist's first solo exhibition took place in Paris, at the Galerie de la Renaissance, and the following year, another one at the Bing Gallery in Paris. Until the early 1930s, Beckmann was increasingly perceived as a major international artist.

Degenerate Art Representative

Since 1930, the NSDAP has become the second largest faction in the Reichstag, the political conditions in Germany have changed, and with them the views on culture. Fullthe Nazi takeover abruptly ended the career of Max Beckmann. In April 1933 he was dismissed without notice from his professorship at the Frankfurt State Academy. The artist moved to Berlin, where he rented an apartment.

The most significant stage in Beckmann's Berlin period between 1933 and 1937 was the creation of triptychs. In the 1930s, the artist replaced the large-scale formats of his early works with works consisting of three parts, united by a common idea. Not only the size of the works has changed radically, but also its attitude to the creative process, the surrounding world, life and destiny. Studying occultism and theosophy, reflecting on the idea of the invasion of the visible into the invisible world, he revives allegory in his works.

Under the National Socialists, from 1936, a complete ban on works of contemporary art began to operate in relation to the acquisition and exhibitions of state museums, trade and, in some cases, production. Max Beckmann became one of the most hated artists for the Nazis. 190 of his works were confiscated from German museums as "degenerate". Some of these works have been sold abroad, others have been destroyed.

On July 17, 1937, the Beckmanns emigrated to Amsterdam, and two days later, the Nazis opened an exhibition of "Degenerate Art" in Munich, which was then shown throughout Germany. Beckman was represented in the exposition with ten paintings and twelve graphic works. The couple lived in Amsterdam for 10 years, another move to Paris became impossible for them, becausethat in September 1939 World War II began.

The Creator in Exile

Max Beckmann visualized the exile experience through images of itinerant and circus performers, or cabaret singers donning masks for their performances. Another theme in Beckman's artistic imagery is the carnival. An example of this is "Self-Portrait with a Horn" (1938), one of two self-portraits painted in Amsterdam by Beckmann during the first months of his exile. In the triptych "Carnival" (1943), the author depicts himself in the white robe of Pierrot in the middle of the central panel.

Beckman's work was regularly attended by clowning and acting, with which the artist symbolized useless human activity. The work Begin the Beguine (1946, Michigan) creates a joyful mood of dance under the threat of hidden danger. Masquerade (1948) shows the same connection between the celebratory and the gloomy. In this work, as in many paintings, Beckman depicts himself and his wife as a fashionably dressed couple.

Post-war years

After the end of the war, Max Beckmann categorically ruled out a return to Berlin. He turned down invitations from the Academy in Munich, the College of Art in Berlin and the School of Applied Arts in Darmstadt. In 1947, he and his wife moved to the United States, the same year he became a professor at the Art School of Washington University in St. Louis, and from 1949 he taught at the art school at the Brooklyn Museum. And yet he was aware of himselfexile. In America, Beckman spent the last three years of his life. Here he had to draw all his optimism and strength, given the monstrous grandeur of the country and the cosmopolitan life in New York.

After emigrating to the United States, in addition to allegorical paintings, Max Beckmann created several watercolors, including Plaza (the lobby of the hotel) and Night on the City (both 1950). The forms of his figures became even bolder, and the colors more piercing. It should not be forgotten that Beckmann's last years were very successful, he received relatively high recognition in the remaining three years the artist lived in the New World. Max Beckmann died on December 27, 1950 in New York from heart failure on his way home from work.