Max Beckmann Reloaded

Max Beckmann Born: February 12, 1884; Leipzig, Germany Died: December 28, 1950; New York City, United States Nationality: German Art Movement: Expressionism, New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) Painting School: Berlin Secession, Degenerate art (exhibition, held by the Nazis in Munich in 1937, named to inflame public opinion against modernism) Field: painting, printmaking, sculpture, drawing Influenced by: Edvard Munch, Henri Rousseau Influenced on: Ivan Eyre Art institution: Städelschule (Academy of Fine Art), Frankfurt, Germany Soundtrack: Gustav Mahler Symphony No 9 in D-Major 4. Adagio, Sehr langsam und noch zurückhaltend Sophia Philarmonic Orchestra Emil Tavakov, conductor Painter, engraver, sculptor and writer, Max Beckmann, of German origin, is widely considered to be one of the great figures of the expressionist movement. Born on February 12, 1884 in Leipzig, Germany, he learned painting on his own by studying the works of Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Rembrandt van Rijn and Sir Peter Paul Rubens. Beckmann was a doctor during the First World War, his distorted paintings and his cynical portrayal of humanity are often attributed to this trauma. Many of his most famous works depict a corrupt Weimar Germany filled with amputated war victims, grotesque prostitutes and immoral businessmen. In 1933 the Nazi government fired him from his teaching position at the Frankfurt Art School, and in 1937 he fled to Amsterdam with his wife where they lived for 10 years. After the war, he taught at Washington University in St. Louis and at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. His work is exhibited at MoMA and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Art Institute of and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He died on December 27, 1950 in New York.