Max Beckmann

Max Carl Friedrich Beckmann (February 12, 1884 – December 27, 1950) was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer. 

Despite being classified as an Expressionist artist he rejected both the term and the movement. In the 1920s he was associated with the "New Objectivity" ("Neue Sachlichkeit") - an outgrowth of Expressionism that opposed its introverted emotionalism.

Beckmann's paintings show boldness, lust and pain through delineated figures. He often painted actors, cabaret singers, heroes and thugs in a harsh postwar urban life but even when dealing with light subject matter like circus performers, his works often had an undercurrent of moodiness or unease.

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. Soon he was forced to resign as an art professor and his artworks were declared as degenerate. He left for America where he lived in exile and remained active as an artist.