The Family, plate eleven from Die Hölle
<p>The last image of <em>Hell</em> depicts Max Beckmann, his grandmother, and his son, Peter, ending the series on a note of equivocation. Peter wears a helmet and smiles gleefully as he plays with toy grenades, while Beckmann’s grandmother sits passively. The artist himself is framed by the Christian image of the cross in the window and also points to heaven, but in an unclear sign of either blame or submission to fate. The clarity of the form of the image dissolves in the confusion of the iconographic message. This encapsulates Beckmann’s view of German society in this moment of postwar disaster.</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1919
- Dimensions
- Image: 74.5 × 44 cm (29 3/8 × 17 3/8 in.); Sheet: 87 × 61 cm (34 5/16 × 24 1/16 in.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- Max Beckmann
Artist
Painting
Max Carl Friedrich Beckmann was 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. Even when dealing with light subject matter like circus performers, Beckmann often had an undercurrent of moodiness or unease in his works. By the 1930s, his work became more explicit in its horrifying imagery and distorted forms with combination of brutal realism and social criticism, coinciding with the rise of Nazism in Germany.
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More by Max Beckmann
Birdplay
1949 · Pen and black ink, with scraping, over charcoal, on cream laid paper
Women Fishing
1949 · Pastel and charcoal with stumping on cream wove paper
Composition (Komposition) from the illustrated book Max Beckmann
1948 · Lithograph
Woman with Fish (Frau mit Fisch) from the illustrated book Max Beckmann
1948 · Lithograph
1. Woman with Fish (Frau mit Fisch) 2. Composition (Komposition) from the illustrated book Max Beckmann
1948 · Two lithographs
Circus, plate 12 from Day and Dream
1946 · Lithograph on cream wove paper
Record
Verified by WattsOS- Artist
- Max Beckmann
- Year
- 1919
- Dimensions
- Image: 74.5 × 44 cm (29 3/8 × 17 3/8 in.); Sheet: 87 × 61 cm (34 5/16 × 24 1/16 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1919-085816
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified