MAX BECKMANN, quotes on his painting art and life by the German painter-artist + his stories on life and biography facts
Max Beckmann (1888 – 1976), his quotes on art and artistic life in the war-periods in Germany and The Netherlands by the great German artist. Beckmann became famous for his modern mythological images he created in his paintings like in his famous triptychs ‘Departure’ and ‘Argonauts’. Beckmann’s quotes illustrate very well his biography as an famous artist & the task he gave himself in life, being a consciously creating artist. Beckmann fled for the Nazi’s to the Netherlands in 1934; he stayed and worked in the center of Amsterdam till 1947, when he left for his last life-time in The United States. There he painted some of his great triptych paintings.
* At the bottom more biography and life stories & art links for the famous German artist Max Beckmann. – the editor
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Max Beckmann, quotes on his painting art and his artist life + biography stories
– I have never, God or whatever knows, prostrated myself to be famous, but I would meander through all the sewers of the world, through all degradations and humiliations, in order to paint. I have to do this. Until the last drop every vision that exists in my being must be purged; then it will be a pleasure for me to be rid of this damned torture
* Max Beckmann’s statement on his art of painting: a letter to his first wife Minna, from the front of the first World war, 1915; as quoted in “Max Beckmann”, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 5 (painter of German Expressionism art, famous for his self portraits and triptychs – like ‘Argonauts’ – in an expressionism style; some biography facts below)
– I have such a passion for painting! I am continually working at form. In actual drawing and in my head, and during my sleep. Sometimes I think I shall go mad, this painful, sensual pleasures tires and torments me so much. Everything else vanishes, time and space, and I think of nothing but how to paint the head of the resurrected Christ… …Or how shall I paint Minkchen (his wife Minna, fh) now, with her knees drawn up and her head leaning on her hand against the yellow wall with her rose, or the sparkling light in the dazzling whiteness of the anti-aircraft shell-bursts in the leaden, sun drenched sky….
* Max Beckmann, quote: taken from a letter to his first wife Minna, from the front in the first World war, 11 May, 1915; as quoted in ”Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock – ”, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 213
– Yesterday we came across a cemetery that had been completely destroyed by shellfire. The graves had been blown up, and the coffins lay about in the most uncomfortable positions. The shells had unceremoniously exposed their distinguished occupants to the light of day, and bones, hair, and bits of clothing could be seen through cracks in the burst-open coffins.
* quote from war: a letter to his first wife Minna, from the front of the first World war, 8 June 1915; as quoted in ”Max Beckmann”, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 14
– Oh I wish that I could paint again. Paint is an instrument without which I cannot survive for any length of time. Whenever I even think of gray, green and white, I am overcome with quivers of lust. Then I wish that this war would end and that I might paint again.
* Max Beckmann, quote on desiring for painting: a letter to his first wife Minna, from the front, first World war, 1915; as quoted in ”Max Beckmann”, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 14
– 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 the Almanak publication of ‘Blaue Reiter’ c. 1912 a new kind of art, related to the (changing) times, fh).
* Beckmann’s art statement in the devbate with Franz Marc: the exhibition ‘Expressionisten, die Avant-garde in Deutschland 1905 -1920′, catalogue Nationalgalerie Berlin, DDR, 1986, p. 109
– The editor of this catalogue asked me to make a statement about my work. I don’t have much to write:
Be a child of your age.
Be naturalistic against your own ego.
Be matter-of- fact toward your inner visions.
My love is dedicated to the four great masters of masculine mysticism:
Mäleskirchener (church-painters / muralists, fh), Grünewald, Breughel and Van Gogh.
* Max Beckmann’s list of short art statements as young artist: a catalogue-text for his first major graphic show, November 1917; as quoted in ”Max Beckmann”, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 14
– The trenches wound in meandering lines and white faces peered from dark dugouts – a lot of men were still preparing the positions, and everywhere among them there were graves. Where they sat, beside their dugouts, even between the sandbags, crosses stuck out. Corpses jammed in among them. It sounds like fiction – one man was frying potatoes on a grave next to his dugout. The existence of life here (the front, fh) had already become a paradoxical joke.
* Beckmann’s artist quote from the front of World War 1.: a letter to Minna, from the front, first World war, 21 May, 1915; as quoted in ”Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock – ”, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 213
Politics is a subordinate matter; its form of appearance constantly changes depending on the needs of the masses, the same way cocottes adjust to the needs of men by transforming and masking themselves. Because of that it is not fundamental. That is about what endures, what is unique, what is in the stream of illusions – what is eliminated from the workings of the shadows.
* Max Beckmann, his statement on the uniqueness of art: a letter to Stephan Lackner, Amsterdam, 29 January 1938; as quoted in ”Max Beckmann – On my Painting”, in the preface, Mayen Beckmann; Tate Publishing London, 2003
– Departure (‘Departure’ is also the title of a triptych Beckmann recently made that year, fh), yes departure from the illusion of life toward the essential things that wait behind appearance… …We must insist that Departure is not bound to a political trend, but is symbolic for all times.
* artist quote on his painting Departure a letter to his art dealer Curt Valentin, Amsterdam, 11 February 1938; as quoted in ”Max Beckmann – On my Painting”, in the preface, Mayen Beckmann; Tate Publishing London, 2003
– Put the picture away or, preferably, send it back to me, dear Valentin. If people cannot understand it is based on their inner engagement with these matters, then there is no point in showing the thing at all.
* Max Beckmann, his quote on reaction of the public on his art a letter to his art dealer Curt Valentin, Amsterdam, 11 February 1938; as quoted in ”Max Beckmann”, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 52
– Painting is a very difficult thing. It absorbs the whole man, body and soul – thus I have passed blindly many things which belong to the real and political life. I assume, though, that there are two worlds: the world of spiritual life and the world of political reality. Both are manifestations of life which may sometimes coincide but are very different in principle. I must leave it to you (the audience, fh) to decide which is the more important.
* statement on the essence and character of painting: ‘On my painting’ (republished text of his public speech during the exhibition ‘Twentieth-Century German Art’, London, 21 July 1938), in ”Max Beckmann – On my Painting”, Tate Publishing London, 2003
– 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 to the invisible, rather as a famous cabalist once said, ‘If you wish to grasp the invisible, penetrate as deeply as possible into the visible’.
* Max Beckmann, a statement on the task on painting to make the invisible visible: ‘On my painting’, public speech, London, 21 July 1938; as quoted in ”Max Beckmann”, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 77
– My aim is always to get hold of the magic of reality and to transfer this reality in painting – to make the invisible visible through reality… …What helps me most in this task is the penetration of space. Height, width and depth are the three phenomena which I must transfer into one plane to form the abstract surface of the picture, and thus to protect myself from the infinity of space. My figures come and go, suggested by fortune or misfortune. I try to fix them divested of their apparent accidental quality.
* quote on his aim to get hold of the magic of life: ‘On my painting’ as quoted in “Max Beckmann – On my Painting”, Tate Publishing London, 2003, p. 12
– One of my problems is to find the Ego, which has only one form and is immortal – to find it in animals and men, in the heaven and in the hell which together form the world in which we live.
* Max Beckmann’s quote on the Ego and Space in his art: ‘On my painting’ – his public speech during the exhibition ‘Twentieth-Century German Art’, London, 21 July 1938
– Space and space again, is the infinite deity which surrounds us and in which we are ourselves contained.
* statement on space in his art: ‘On my painting’, as quoted in “Max Beckmann – On my Painting”, Tate Publishing London, 2003, p. 12
– It is not the subject which matters but the translation of the subject into the abstraction of the surface by means of painting. Therefore 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.
* his statement on avoiding abstraction in painting: ‘On my painting’, as quoted in “Max Beckmann – On my Painting”, Tate Publishing London, 2003, pp. 12-13
– Often, very often, I am alone. My studio in Amsterdam, (Beckmann lived in the heart of Amsterdam till 1946, because of Nazi threat, fh) an enormous old tobacco storeroom is again filled in my imagination with figures from the old days and from the new, like an ocean moved by storm and sun and always present in my thoughts. Then shapes become beings and seem comprehensible to me in the great void and uncertainty of the space which I call god.
* Max Beckmann, quote on shapes and the void in art: ‘On my painting’ (republished text of his public speech during the exhibition ‘Twentieth-Century German Art’, London, 21 July 1938
– All things come to me in black and white like virtue and crime. Yes, black and white are the two elements which concern me. It is my fortune, or misfortune, that I can see neither all in black nor all in white… …I cannot help realizing both, for only in the two, only in black and white, can I see God as a unity creating again and again a great and eternally changing terrestrial drama.
* statement on using black and white in his painting: ‘On my painting’, as quoted in “Max Beckmann – On my Painting”, Tate Publishing London, 2003, pp. 13-14
-…all important things in art since Ur of the Chaldea’s, since Tel Halaf and Crete, have always originated from the deepest feeling about the mystery of Being. Self-realization is the urge of all objective spirits. It is this Ego for which I am searching in my life and in my art. Art is creative for the sake of realization, not for amusement, for transfiguration, not for the sake of play. It is the quest of our Ego that drives us along the eternal and never-ending journey we must all make.
* quote on the eternal character of art and the mystery of Being: ‘On my painting’,- republished text of his public speech during the exhibition ‘Twentieth-Century German Art’, London, 21 July 1938
– … as a painter, cursed or blessed with a terrible and vital sensuousness, I must look for wisdom with my eyes. I repeat, with my eyes, for nothing could be more ridiculous or irrelevant than a ‘philosophical conception’ painted purely intellectually without the terrible fury of the senses grasping each visible form of beauty and ugliness.
* artist quotes on the role of seeing and the visible forms of beauty: ‘On my painting’ – text of his speech during the exhibition ‘Twentieth-Century German Art’, London, 21 July 1938
– Everything intellectual and transcendent is joined together in painting by the uninterrupted labour of the eyes. Each shade of a flower, a face, a tree, a fruit, a sea, a mountain, is noted eagerly by the intensity of the senses to which is added, in a way of which we are not conscious, the work of the mind, and in the end the strength or weakness of the soul…. …It is the strength of soul which forces the mind to constant exercise to widen its conception of space. Something of this is perhaps contained in my pictures.
* Beckmann, quote on the conception of Space in his art: as quoted in “Max Beckmann – On my Painting”, Tate Publishing London, 2003, p. 14
– It is, of course, a luxury to create art and, on top of this, to insist on expressing one’s own artistic opinion. Nothing is more luxurious than this. It is a game and a good game, at least for me; one of the few games which make life, difficult and depressing as it is sometimes, a little more interesting.
* quote on art as a game in life: ‘On my painting’ republished text of his public speech during the exhibition ‘Twentieth-Century German Art’, London, 21 July 1938
– Imagination is perhaps the most decisive characteristic of mankind. My dream is the imagination of space – to change the optical impression of the world of objects by a transcendental arithmetic progression of the inner being. That is the precept. In principal any alteration of the object is allowed which has a sufficiently strong creative power behind it. Whether such alteration causes excitement or boredom in the spectator is for you to decide.
* Max Beckmann, statement on visual imagination by art: ‘On my painting’, a republished text of his public speech during the exhibition ‘Twentieth-Century German Art’, London, 21 July 1938
– One thing is sure – we have to transform the three-dimensional world of objects into the two-dimensional world of the canvas… …To transform three into two dimensions is for me an experience full of magic in which I glimpse for a moment that fourth dimension which my whole being is seeking.
* quote on the transformation of three dimensional world and life in two-dimensional painting art: “Max Beckmann: On my Painting”, Tate Publishing London, 2003, p. 16
– The individual representation of the object, treated sympathetically or antipathetically, is highly necessary and is an enrichment to the world in form. The elimination of the human relationship causes the vacuum which makes all of us suffer in various degrees – an individual alteration of the details of the object represented is necessary in order to display on the canvas the whole physicals reality.
* Max Beckmann on representation by creating art: as quoted in “Max Beckmann – On my Painting”, Tate Publishing London, 2003, pp. 17-18
– ..the Ego is the great veiled mystery of the world… …I believe in it and in its eternal, immutable form. Its path is, in some strange and peculiar manner, our path. And for this reason I am immersed in the phenomenon of the Individual, the so-called whole Individual, and I try in every way to explain and present it. What are you? What am I? Those are the questions that constantly persecute and torment me and perhaps also play some part in my art.
* statements on the role of Ego in life and his painting art: ‘On my painting’ – text of his public speech during the exhibition ‘Twentieth-Century German Art’, London, 21 July 1938
– Colour, as the strange and magnificent expression of the inscrutable spectrum of Eternity, is beautiful and important to me as a painter; I use it to enrich the canvas and to probe more deeply into the object. Colour also decided, to a certain extent, my spiritual outlook, but it is subordinated to life, and above all, to the treatment of form. Too much emphasis on colour at the expense of form and space would make a double manifestation of itself on the canvas, and this would verge on craft work.
* Max Beckmann, quote on the meaning of color in painting: as quoted in “Max Beckmann – On my Painting”, Tate Publishing London, 2003, pp. 18-19
– My first informed impression, and what I would like to achieve, I can perhaps only realize when I am impelled as in a vision. One of my figures, perhaps one from the Temptation, sang his strange song to me one night – …We are playing hide-and-seek, we are playing hide-and-seek across a thousand seas, we gods … when the skies are red in the middle of the night, when the skies are red at night. You cannot see us, you cannot see us but you are ourselves… that is what makes us laugh so gaily… …Stars are our eyes and nebulae our beards… we have people’s souls for our hearts. We hide ourselves and you cannot see us, which is just what we want…
* art reflection: as quoted in “Max Beckmann – On my Painting”, Tate Publishing London, 2003, p. 19
– And then I awoke and yet continued to dream… painting constantly appeared to me as the one and only possible achievement. I thought of my grand old friend Henri Rousseau (French painter, also admired by Picasso, fh) that Homer in the porter’s lodge whose pre-historic dreams have sometimes brought me near the gods. I saluted him in my dream. Near him I saw William Blake, noble emanation of English genius… …’Have confidence in your objects,’ he said, ‘do not let yourself be intimidated by the horror of the world. Everything is ordered and correct and must fulfil its destiny in order to attain perfection. Seek this path…’
I awoke and found myself in Holland in the midst of boundless world turmoil. But my belief in the final release and absolution of all things, whether they please or torment, was newly strengthened. Peacefully I laid my head among the pillows… to sleep, and dream, again.
* a vision of being artists, referring to the painters Blake and Rousseau: ‘On my painting’, a republished text of his public speech during the exhibition ‘Twentieth-Century German Art’, London, 21 July 1938
– I am working here 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!
* Beckmann’s artist quote on creating tryptichs: a letter to Stephan Lackner, Amsterdam, 1939; as quoted in ”Max Beckmann”, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 5
– Thick rumors of imminent peace are in the air… …Big spectacle with six or seven British tanks. In the afternoon, they played war once more at the Palaisplein (= Dam square in Amsterdam, fh) and at the Rokin (where Beckmann lived for 7 years – as a German under German occupation; The Netherlands was liberated by the Allies, 5 May 1945, fh).
* quote at the end of the war in Amsterdam where Beckmann lived, more or less hidden for the German Nazi’s:; as quoted in ”Max Beckmann”, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 80
– The world is rather shot to pieces (end of World War II, fh), 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 (the War years in Amsterdam, fh) and again and again work – in spite of everything (using his bed sheets instead of canvas, fh)
* reports on the last weeks of the war: a letter to Stephan Lackner, Amsterdam, 27 August 1945, from ”Max Beckmann”, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, pp. 80 + 86
– Arrival (in New York, fh) at break of dawn. Veiled giants stood sleepily in wet mist on Manhattan… …Yes, New York is really grandiose. But it stinks of burned fat, just like the sacrificial meal of the slain enemies among the savages. But nevertheless –crazy, crazy, crazy! Babylon is a kindergarten compared with this, and the tower of Babel here becomes the mass erection of a monstrous and senseless will. I am sympathetic.
* quote about his impression of the arrival in New York: from his diary-notes, New York, 8 and 9 September 1947; as quoted in ”Max Beckmann”, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 89
– And the evening of the big Vanity Fair arrived… …Perry Rathbone and innumerable people received me in enormous halls. The reporter shot pictures and Mrs Beckmann grinned – – o-la-La… …The whole story is a monumental caprice of my situation in Germany before the Nazi’s.
* quote about his impression of the arrival in New York: from his diary-notes, Saint Louis, 6 October 1947; as quoted in ”Max Beckmann”, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 89
– Learn by heart the forms to be found in nature, so that you can use them like the notes in a musical composition. That is what these forms are for. Nature is a marvellous chaos, and it is our job and our duty to bring order into that chaos and – to perfect it.
* art statement on forms from Nature: his lecture ‘Drei Briefe an eine Malerin’, New York and Boston, Spring 1948; as quoted in ”Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock – ”, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 214
– A human face, a hand, a woman’s breast or a manly body, an expression of conflicting joy and pain, the infinite ocean, savage crags, the melancholy speech of black trees against the snow, the fierce power of spring blossoms and the heavy lethargy of a hot summer noon when our old friend Pan is asleep and the ghost of noon are murmuring – all this is enough to make us forget the sorrows of the world, or to give them form. In any case the determination to give form to things brings with it part of the solution for which you are seeking. The path is hard and the goal can never be reached – but it is a path.
* Max Beckmann’s statements as art teacher: from his lecture ‘Drei Briefe an eine Malerin’, New York and Boston, Spring 1948; as quoted in ”Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock – ”, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 215
Max Beckmann, his not sourced artist quotes about life and creating painting art
– The metaphysics of substance. The strange feeling which comes over us when we sense: this is skin – this is bone – all in a single vision that is completely unearthly. The dreaminess of our existence mixed at the same time with the indescribably sweet illusion of reality (note in Beckmann’s sketchbook, probably referring to his last triptych ‘The Argonauts’ he painted in 1950, the year Beckmann died, fh)
– My heart beats more for a raw, average vulgar art, which doesn’t live between sleepy fairy-tale moods and poetry but rather concedes a direct entrance to the fearful, commonplace, splendid and the average grotesque banality in life ( Beckmann, artist quotes)
Max Beckmann, his biography facts about life and creating painting art
Max Beckmann was a famous German painter artist who belonged in fact to German Expressionism as Kirchner did, however with a very individual position and a personal development. Beckmann went into World War 1, in which he served as a medic soldier. His war experiences resulted in a dramatic transformation of his art style from academic painting to a strong distortion of human figure and his space. Max Beckmann took up and advanced in creating his own art the tradition of European figurative painting. He greatly admired Paul Cézanne, Van Gogh, Blake, Henri Rousseau, Rembrandt, Rubens and the Northern European art of the late Middle Ages, as Brueghel and Grunewald and the sculptors. His option was to create a new and modern human mythology and space, combined with traditional plasticity. He is famous for the many self-portraits painted throughout his life, their number and intensity rivaled only by Rembrandt and Picasso. Well-read in philosophy and literature, he also contemplated mysticism and theosophy in search of the “Self” (read his later quotes, ed.)
In 1937 the Nazi’s confiscated his paintings and Beckmann went to Amsterdam where he stayed during the 5 War-years despite Nazi-German occupation. The paintings he created in this period were very powerful and intensively; they included some of his famous large triptychs (Departure) which stand as a summation of his existential art, and some self-portraits. After the War, Beckmann moved to the United States where he continued his painting and taught at the Art School of Washington University in St. Louis. In 1950 he made the last famous triptych of his life, in the same year he died.
Max Beckmann, some art links for detailed biography facts and his painting art
* information on life and creating his art by the famous German artist Max Beckmann, on Wikipedia
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* biography and more life facts, in the Max Beckmann Archive
