Shaped by a life lived between two World Wars, Beckmann is best known for work that bears witness to the moral fractures of the inter-war period, who resisted categorization within expressionism and new objectivity. Bringing together self-portraits, landscapes and portraits spanning the entirety of his career, some of which have been rarely exhibited before, the exhibition unveils a more intimate dimension of Beckmann’s practice, albeit one that remains underlined with the anxiety and psychological intensity of the early 20th Century.

The earliest works in the exhibition were created when Beckmann was still a student and testify to the remarkable independence of his style, even as a teenager. One of his first self-portraits, ‘Selbstbildnis mit Seifenblasen (Self-Portrait with Soap Bubbles)’ (ca. 1900), depicts the artist gazing pensively into the distance as soap bubbles float across the sky. Beckmann would go on to create more than 80 self-portraits over the course of his career, including ‘Selbstbildnis auf Grün mit grünem Hemd (Self-Portrait on Green with Green Shirt)’ (1938). Created almost four decades later, the contrast between these two paintings reflects the transformative impact of World War I on his practice.

Courtesy Hauer & Wirth.