Max Beckmann in quotes, the famous artist on his painting & life - free resource, German art history

**Max Beckmann in quotes - the famous German artist on his painting art, modern mythology and life in Germany, later the U.S. ** - free resource for students, pupils and teachers in art history

Beckmann’s quotes express very well the task he gave himself as an artist: creating art as an ‘eternal expression’.
Beckmann painted modern mythological images in his paintings, like in his famous triptychs ‘Departure’ and ‘Argonauts’. His option was to create images of a modern human mythology, combined with traditional plasticity. Beckmann criticized firmly other German contemporary artists like Franz Marc with their idea of art as a ‘expression of modern times’. For Beckmann art was holy and eternal, so for all times.

Max Beckmann had to fly to The Netherlands in 1934, to escape the Nazi threat in Germany; he worked and lived in Amsterdam till 1947. Then he left for the U.S. where he was invited.
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Some selected artist-quotes of famous German artist Max Beckmann - as a short introduction of his extended quotes in the PDF:

• ’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…’ - quote of Beckmann, in his letter from the war-front, to his German wife Minna, May 1915

• ’To me the most important thing (in a painting) is roundness captured in height and breadth. Roundness in the plane, depth in the feeling of the plane’ - Max Beckmann’s quote from his text ‘Schopferische Konfession’ (Creative credo), 1918

• ’Put the picture away or, preferably, send it back to me… .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’. - quote from Beckmann’s letter to his art-dealer Curt Valentin, Febr. 1938
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  selection of free art-resources on German artist Max Beckmann:

  • extended biographical notes of Beckmann, on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Beckmann
  • artist-quotes of ànd about Beckmann, on Wikiquote: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Beckmann
  • images of Beckmann’s painting art, on Wikiart: https://www.wikiart.org/en/Search/Beckmann
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    editor: Fons Heijnsbroek / Matrozenhof (FotoDutch on Wikiquote):<br>[http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/User:FotoDutch]