Max Beckmann

Still Life with Orchids and Green Bowl

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Max Beckmann, 1884–1950
Still Life with Orchids and Green Bowl (1943)
Oil on canvas
60 x 90 cm
Acquired by Bayer in 1950
© VG Bild-Kunst; Bonn 2007

Max Beckmann was one of the most outstanding German artists of the twentieth century. His early work was shaped by German Impressionism. However, World War I brought about a clear transformation in style, toward Expressionism. Now, he often divided up space in the Cubist manner.

The National Socialist regime classified Beckmann’s work as degenerate and it was reviled in propaganda exhibitions. The most notorious of these abusive events was held in July 1937 in the Hofarkaden in Munich, where an exhibition entitled Degenerate Art included ten of Beckmann’s works. The artists vilified in that exhibition are now regarded as masters of modern art.

The Städelschule art school in Frankfurt, which had fallen into line with the Nazi regime, dismissed Max Beckmann from his professorship summarily as early as 1933. He moved to Berlin, but left Germany forever in 1937, emigrating first to Amsterdam.

There, Beckmann produced around 280 oil paintings, one third of his entire oeuvre as a painter. The more dismal the external circumstances, the brighter and livelier his pictures became. His still life paintings are examples of this. Starting from the early 1920s, Beckmann painted more than 140 still lifes. Flowers – in this case orchids – are the central motif of many from the Amsterdam years. They are a symbol of thriving zest for life. Despite the narrowness of the picture sections and the walls that confine the motifs, the flowers still unfold their full beauty.

Beckmann first applied for a United States visa in 1939, and finally emigrated there in 1947. In the final years of his life in America he was highly acclaimed and his works were shown in numerous exhibitions.