Self-Portrait in Words: Collected Writings and Statements, 1903-1950
by Max Beckmann
from University Of Chicago Press
German expressionist painter Max Beckmann, whose paintings were influenced by horrific scenes he witnessed as a medical orderly in World War I, was eventually labeled a "degenerate artist" by the Nazis and forced to flee his homeland. In this collection of essays, speeches, and letters, Beckmann emerges as a deeply intelligent and sensitive observer of the world. Of particular note are writings from the battlefields of 1915, and some of his instructional comments to students from his time spent teaching in the United States in the late 1940s.
"Barbara Copeland Buenger . . . has done an excellent job of editing and annotating Beckmann's voluminous private and public writings."—Andrea Barnet, New York Times Book Review
Max Beckmann: Exile in Amsterdam
by Felix Billeter
from Hatje Cantz
Between 1937 and 1947, while he was in exile in Amsterdam, the German-born painter Max Beckmann (1884-1950) made approximately a third of the work he would create in his lifetime. When he moved on, it was to accept an appointment as a professor at Washington University in St. Louis. Before that peacetime respite, he countered Europe's threatening instability with intense concentration. Max Beckmann in Amsterdam opens with the last work he completed in Germany, a triptych titled Versuchung (Temptation), and dedicates the balance of its pages to the paintings and drawings from his years in Holland. These widely varied responses to his immediate historical and biographical situation show horror of developments in Nazi Germany and constant physical and mental tension created by his wartime surroundings. As a body of work, Beckmann's Amsterdam portfolio is not only of great importance in understanding his motivations and methods, and in itself a record of the most productive phase in his life, but also a critical examination of a crucial moment in twentieth-century history.
Max Beckmann and the Self (Pegasus Library)
by Wendy Beckett
from Prestel Publishing
As original as he was prolific, German artist Max Beckmann produced nearly a thousand works in a career that spanned two world wars. This beautifully produced volume uses Beckmann's own words as an introduction to the artist's creative expression and his unwavering search for the self.
Beckmann struggled throughout his life to define his identity through his paintings. He started out as an ambitious and self-confident young artist, went through a horrific stint as a medical orderly in World War I, and then became an exile in Holland and the United States. Through her careful analyses of more than fifty works, Sister Wendy illuminates Beckmann's use of symbolism as well as the strong thematic strains of his paintings and triptychs. The artist's bold use of color and line are in brilliant evidence in numerous full-color reproductions, and an extensive biography as well as several photographs offer additional insight into this strong creative presence who never failed to challenge himself or his audience with his art.
Beckmann (Modern Masters Series, Vol. 19)
by Peter Selz
from Abbeville Press
Max Beckmann On My Painting
by Max Beckmann
from Tate
Max Beckmann (1884-1950) is widely regarded as one of the most important figurative painters of the last 100 years, and On My Painting is one of the key texts essential for understanding his work. Composed in 1938, it was read by Beckmann at the opening of the 20th-Century German Art exhibition in London, a riposte to the Degenerate Art exhibition that Hitler held to pillory the work of Beckmann and other figures of the avant-garde. In his lecture, Beckmann outlined his artistic as well as his moral and spiritual vision, providing a unique insight into his complex work.
Max Beckmann: Dream of Life
by Cornelia Homburg
from Hatje Cantz Publishers
Description: "Art serves understanding, not entertainment," reads one of Max Beckmann's dictums. Beckmann's oeuvre, widely acknowledged to be some of the most significant German art of the twentieth century, contains a wealth of existential and contemporary historical convictions and questions. This representative selection of some 60 figurative paintings done between 1917 and the artist's death in 1950 unfolds the entire panorama of his career, from violent works reflecting the shock of war to pieces from his later years in New York, from the Cubism and Expressionism of his youth to the Symbolism of his later age. The Dream of Life sheds new light on the development of Beckmann's techniques, ideas and central themes: cabaret, music, the world of the theater, dreams and reality, sensual settings and the role of the female muse, as well as his unusual use of romantic visual motifs in landscapes and urban contexts. The authors focus on conceptual aspects of Beckmann's work which have heretofore been neglected.
Max Beckmann
by Susanne Bieber
from The Museum of Modern Art, New York
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.
Max Beckmann: Tradition As a Problem in Modern Art
Max Beckmann (Masters of Art Series)
by Stephan Lackner
from Harry N Abrams
Another title from The Crown Art Library, the most useful monographs available on a wide range of significant artists. Each volume is written by an internationally recognized authority and is generously illustrated with full-color reproductions of the artist's paintings and two-color reproductions of sketches and line drawings.
Max Beckmann 1884-1950: The Path to Myth (Big Series : Art)
+++
