Max Beckmann: Departure

by Oliver Kase (Editor), Sarah Louisa Henn, Christiane Zeiller

On the conflicting drives of wanderlust and exile in the art of the great German Expressionist

For German painter Max Beckmann (1884–1950), travel was of fundamental existential significance. In the 1920s, he regularly traveled to the health resorts and palatial hotels on the Dutch, Italian and French coasts. His defamation as a “degenerate” artist by the Nazi regime, however, forced him to retreat, first from Frankfurt to Berlin and subsequently into exile in Amsterdam. His eventual emigration to the United States in 1947 marked the culmination of a life in which the longing to travel was confusingly―and yet fruitfully―mingled with uprooting, dislocation and exile.
Max Departure assembles an outstanding selection of artworks by the great painter, and also creates a dialogue with hitherto unseen objects and materials from the Max Beckmann Archive. The book explores Beckmann’s relationship to film and literature as a maker of images of aspirations and longing that resound with conflicting emotions of identity and home.

356 pages, Paperback

First published January 31, 2023