Max Beckmann
Max Beckmann
Max Beckmannwas a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement. In the 1920s, he was associated with the New Objectivity, an outgrowth of Expressionism that opposed its introverted emotionalism...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth12 February 1884
CityLeipzig, Germany
CountryGermany
thinking space legs
I think only of objects: of a leg or an arm, of the wonderful sense of foreshortening, breaking through the plane, of the division of space, of the combination of straight lines in relation to curved ones.
strong creative principles
In principle, any abstraction of the object is allowed which has a sufficiently strong creative power behind it.
spring flower people
I went across the fields to avoid the straight highways, along the firing lines where people were shooting at a small wooded hill, which is now covered with wooden crosses and lines of graves instead of spring flowers.
real mean enough-already
I hardly need to abstract things, for each object is unreal enough already, so unreal that I can only make it real by means of painting.
tears slavery loathe
I do not weep: I loathe tears, for they are a sign of slavery.
wonderful enormous enjoyment
It was so wonderful outside that even the wild senselessness of this enormous death, whose music I hear again and again, could not disturb me from my great enjoyment!
art inspiration feelings
All important things in art have always originated from the deepest feeling about the mystery of Being.
animal overcoming illness
Love in an animal sense is an illness, but a necessity which one has to overcome.
space deities infinite
Space, and space again, is the infinite deity which surrounds us and in which we are ourselves contained.
hate i-hate appetizers
There is nothing I hate more than sentimentality.
giving stories amsterdam
I am working here (in Amsterdam) on my last big triptych, which will be a tremendous story, and which gives me a more intense life and exhilaration. My God, life is worth living!
reality bridges wish
What is important to me in my work is the identity that is hidden behind so-called reality. I search for a bridge from the given present tot the invisible, rather as a famous cabalist once said, 'If you wish to grasp the invisible, penetrate as deeply as possible into the visible'.
art law moral
The laws of art are eternal and don't change at all, as the moral laws don't change in human beings. (in discussion with Franz Marc who demanded in 'Der Blaue Reiter' around 1912 a new art, in relation to its own - changing - time).
war blood boredom
The world is rather shot to pieces (end of World War II), 1945), but the spectators climb out of their caves and pretend to have again become normal and customary humans who ask each other's pardon instead of eating one another or sucking each other's blood. The entertaining folly of war evaporates, distinguished boredom sits down again on the dignified old overstuffed chairs.. ..May I report about myself that I have had a truly grotesque time, brim-full with work, Nazi persecutions, bombs, hunger, and again and again work - in spite of everything (using his bed sheets as canvas