Max Beckmann: The Formative Years, 1915-25 /Anglais

Exhibition at the Neue Galerie, New York, 5 October 2023 - 15 January 2024

This exhibition catalogue focuses on a decisive decade in the career of Max Beckmann (1884-1950), one of the leading figurative painters of the twentieth century, providing an insight into a critical period in the artist's development and the achievements for which he is so highly regarded.

Beckmann's short service as an orderly in the First World War led to a nervous breakdown. He assimilated his experiences and took on board recent radical developments in art, such as Cubism and Expressionism, which led him to propose new pictorial concepts from 1915 onwards. For many of his contemporaries, Beckmann's work between 1917 and 1925 placed him at the forefront of the latest developments in figurative painting.

This book situates Beckmann from an artistic and historical perspective. Essays by acknowledged experts and emerging scholars examine the seminal energy of the works he created between 1915 and 1925. The self-referential aspect of Beckmann's production is essential to understanding his progression as an artist, which becomes clearer through the analysis of these critical early years.