Even Though These Are Max Beckmann’s ‘Formative Years,’ His Self-Portraits Are Formidable
After asking a friend why Beckmann’s bizarre imagery didn’t qualify him as a Surrealist, she responds immediately: ‘Because the world is too real for him.’ Exactly. Meet Max Beckmann, chronicler of times that are perpetually in crisis.

The German painter Max Beckmann (1884-1950) is likely best known for a series of sizable triptychs, canvases whose clustered images channel the medieval, the modern, the mythical, and the mundane. Many New Yorkers are best acquainted with him, in that regard, through “Departure” (1932/’33-’35), long a staple of the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection and as disjunctive an accounting of cultural dislocation as you could hope for — or withstand.
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