Self-portrait, Max Beckmann

Exhibition Label: "Machine in a Void: World War I & the Graphic Arts," Mar-2010, Steve Goddard Beckmann enlisted in the medical corps at the outbreak of the War and served Flanders. In 1915 he suffered from what is presumed to have been a nervous breakdown and was discharged from military service. During the war years and shortly after he produced many prints dealing with his wartime experiences, such as his 1915 drypoint of an exploding grenade, titled simply Die Granate (The Grenade), and some of the compositions in his 1918 portfolio of lithographs, Die Hölle (Hell). The experience of war also coincided with Beckmann’s shift toward a more fractured mode of representation, as in this striking self-portrait of 1922. Archive Label 2003 (version 1): The German Expressionists, with whom Beckmann was loosely affiliated, sought to express their inner selves through their work. This is evident in part through their gestural techniques. In Beckmann’s print, for example, the deep, dark lines give a feeling of emotional intensity. In this way, his self-portrait provides not only a physical description, but perhaps a psychological one as well. Archive Label 2003 (version 2): Max Beckmann was exposed early to avant-garde art, studying in Paris and familiarizing himself with Impressionist and Post-Impressionist styles. Settling in Berlin in 1903, he began his life-long practice of doing self-portraits, exploring the puzzle of the role of the individual’s identity in a chaotic world. During World War I, the artist volunteered for the medical corps, which profoundly affected his work and his choice of subjects. Beckmann worked on several important print series after the war, with themes focusing on urban life as a cabaret. With the Nazi Party’s political ascendency, Beckmann’s art was declared “degenerate.” He was dismissed from his teaching post at the art institute in Frankfurt and his work was removed from all German museums. In 1937, Beckmann was in Amsterdam when German troops occupied the city, and so he was forced to remain there for the remainder of the war, unable to obtain a visa to leave. In 1947, the artist relocated to the United States, teaching first in St. Louis and then at the Art School of the Brooklyn Museum in New York.