Self-portrait in Words

Max Beckmann was labeled a "degenerate artist" by the Nazis and chose exile. His artistic production encompassed the figural themes of his early works to the provocatively blunt portraiture, critical urban views, and richly layered symbolic works for which he is now recognized. Although he was a prolific writer, his written work has never before been collected and translated into English. Beckmann is known for the depth, pungency, and tremendous sensuous force of his works, but little is known about his personal life. He carefully distinguished between his public and private writings; he made long pronouncements about art in private and produced strongly personal public statements. This text maps out Beckmann's life and draws attention to the occasions on or for which he produced his writings, to the importance writing had for him as a form of expression, and to both the contemporary and personal references of his ideas and images. This collection reverberates with Beckmann's experience of life as he moved from the first years of his career in Paris and Berlin to the eastern and western fronts of World War I, the rich cultural and artistic world of postwar Frankfurt, exile in Amsterdam, and final years in the United States. Beckmann's early diaries, war letters, formal statements, interviews, and plays present a different view of this most worldly and involved cultural figure.