Max Beckmann: Exile Figures

Llorens, Tomas

ISBN 10: 8417173226 / ISBN 13: 9788417173227

Verlag: Fundacion Coleccion Thyssen-Bornemisza, 2019

Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 251676834

Inhaltsangabe:

Reckoning with exile: Beckmann as chronicler of the dispossessed

Associated with, but not reducible to, both German Expressionism and New Objectivity, German painter Max Beckmann (1884–1950) developed an individual pictorial style, using a realistic idiom filled with symbolic references to offer a powerful account of the upheavals of the 20th century and their personal effects.

Max Beckmann: Exile Figures brings together more than 60 of Beckmann’s works, including paintings, lithographs and sculptures. The publication offers a full overview of Beckmann’s life and career, beginning with his years in Germany―from his first public recognition prior to World War I through the rise of National Socialism in the 1930s, when he was fired from his teaching position in Frankfurt and banned from exhibiting in public. After this, Beckmann went into self-imposed exile in Amsterdam and the United States, where he would live out the rest of his life.

This book interprets the artist’s entire career through metaphors of exile, understood both literally and as the existential condition of modern man. Max Beckmann: Exile Figures examines several thematic strands of exile and alienation in the artist’s work: the loss of identity associated with the condition of exile; the modern city as the capital of exile; the parallels between exile and death; and the concept of the infinite, with its twin powers of seduction and alienation.

Von der hinteren Coverseite: A retrospective of Max Beckmann’s career from before the First World War to his years in exile from Germany, first in Amsterdam and then New York

This catalogue is published to accompany the exhibition at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, on Max Beckmann (1884–1950), one of Germany’s leading 20th-century artists. Initially close to Expressionism and New Objectivity, Beckmann developed a unique and independent pictorial style, one filled with symbolic resonances that offered a powerful account of the society of his day. Curated by Tomàs Llorens, the exhibition brings together more than fifty works, including paintings, lithographs and sculptures that cover Beckmann’s years in Germany from the period prior to World War I, when he first achieved public recognition, to the rise of National Socialism in the 1930s, when he was expelled from the Frankfurt art school where he taught and was banned from exhibiting in public.

The exhibition also focuses on the artist’s years in Amsterdam and the United States where he lived after he was obliged to leave Germany. This section is based on four metaphors relating to exile, understood both literally and as the existential condition of modern man: Masks, which looks at the loss of identity associated with the condition of exile; Electric Babylon, which focuses on the modern city as the capital of exile; The Long Goodbye, which constructs a parallel between exile and death; and The Sea, a metaphor of the infinite, its powers of seduction and alienation.

Bibliografische Details

Titel: Max Beckmann: Exile Figures
Verlag: Fundacion Coleccion Thyssen-Bornemisza
Erscheinungsdatum: 2019
Einband: Hardcover
Zustand: New