World War I horrors had a profound effect on the art of Europe, especially in Germany where the old system was not just discredited but gone. This expressionist movement aimed to shock and succeeded. A backlash was probably inevitable. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
Max Beckmann’s work displayed on this stamp is titled Junger Argentinier. Beckmann through his art was trying to move beyond the emotionalism and self obsession of the expressionist art movement. The dourness definitely remained.
Todays stamp is issue A1099, a 55 cent stamp issued by Germany on February 13th, 2003. It was issued in conjunction with a second stamp featuring a different artist. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 75 cents used.
Max Beckmann was born in Leipzig, Germany in 1884. He was into a well off but middle class family that afforded him an education steeped in the old masters. His early artistic output reflected this.
In World War I. Beckmann volunteered for service as a medic. In this role he experienced the horrors and loss. As with most of his contemporaries, his postwar art became less literal and realistic. He was them awarded a prestigious teaching position at the Stadelschule Academy of Fine Art in Frankfort.
As his art matured, Beckmann began to reject the excesses of other expressionists and joined a movement toward a new objectivity in art. This was a more back to business style more reflective of America where the war was less impactful.
Beckmann was not alone in thinking the Expressionists had gone to far. On the far right in Germany there was a yearning to get back to a style of art that uplifted, was pro family and patriotic. Beckmann was not a fellow traveler in that.
With Nazi control of the institutions, Beckmann was dismissed from his teaching position. It then went further with his art on the list of those to be removed from museams and galleries. As a final insult, Hitler labeled modern art as degenerate and a traveling show was hastily arraigned to display the art now banned in a mocking manner. The show included works by Beckmann. The day after the Degenerate art show opened in Munich, Beckmann and his family moved to Amsterdam in Holland. He was not Jewish.
It took 10 more years for Beckmann to achieve his goal of moving to the United States. The Nazis were not done torturing Beckmann. Still in German occupied Holland and near 60, there was an attempt to draft him into the army. In 1947 he was finally allowed to come to the USA and given a teaching position at Saint Louis University. He died three years later.
Well my drink is empty. Understanding the troubles Beckmann faced, one can understand the dourness of his work. I can understand the right’s desire from more uplifting art, but perhaps that needs to happen organically when times are better. Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.