Max Beckmann

Beckmann lived from 1884 to 1950. He was a German sculptor, painter, draftsman, and writer. After reading a little about him, his story seems somewhat unfortunate. He was a successful artist in the years before WWII in Germany but ran into trouble with Hitler's disapproval of modern art.

He is considered to be a part of the Expressionist movement (although he rejected being a part of it). In the 1920s he was a part of New Objectivity which grew out of Expressionists but rejected their introverted emotionalism.

He did a lot of self-portraits and is rivaled by Picasso and Rembrandt (who apparently did a lot of self-portraits - I think I knew about Picasso but not Rembrandt).

In the Weimar Republic he received lots of honors and was a teacher at the School of Art in Frankfurt. In 1933, the Nazi's dismissed him from his position there and confiscated 500 of his works from German Museums.

For 10 years, he lived in poverty in Amsterdam and then moved to the US where he taught at Washington University in St. Louis and the Brooklyn Museum. He had a fatal heart-attack in 1950.

His work comes from a period of huge societal and art world changes. Many of his paintings express the agony of world-torn Europe. He was less interested in non-representational paintings and turned to figurative painting.