Self - Portrait

Born in 1884, Max Beckmann was a German artist and writer who, though he rejected the term and movement, was most closely associated with German Expressionism. Though as a young man he practiced drawing like the old masters, his experiences in the First World War as a medical orderly dramatically changed his style, which became increasingly distorted in both colour and form.

Best known for his extraordinary number of self-portraits, Beckmann received great critical acclaim throughout the years of the Weimar Republic, but his art was denounced by the Nazis and, upon Hitler’s ascension to power, rejected as degenerate art. Originally failing to gain a visa to the U.S. and painting in a studio in Amsterdam, Beckmann eventually emigrated after the war to New York. He died there in 1950.