Book Description
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.
Max Beckmann and the Self FROM THE PUBLISHER
Sister Wendy Beckett's highly acclaimed insights into the work and psyche of Max Beckmann, one of the major Expressionist painters and graphic artists of the 20th century. The author sheds new light on the way the traumatic events in the artist's life were reflected in his painting and observes that "he painted himself as if thereby to find himself. If he could make visible...these lineaments, that expression, that visual record of his experience, then he might come to a deeper experience of what he was." By tracing the changing moods of Beckmann's painting throughout his life, Sister Wendy, with her uncanny and intimate skills of analysis, plots a fascinating series of peaks and troughs in his feeling of self-worth. She correlates these directly with events in his life, and reveals a number of hidden self-portraits. Much of Beckmann's work was dramatically influenced by the two world wars, and Sister Wendy shows how it was only the artist's last works, in America, that demonstrated he had finally reached fulfillment.
Art & Photography
Book Info
