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Max Beckmann (February 12, 1884 - December 27,
1950) was a Germany|German painter,
lithography|lithographer and woodcut artist.

Beckmann was born in Leipzig into a farming
family, who gave up their farm and moved to
Leipzig after his birth. Beckmann drew from a
young age, and in 1900 entered the Weimar Academy
of Arts.  When Beckmann was 10 years old, his
father passed away.

Beckmann married Minna Tube in 1903, and the two
moved to Paris. Beckmann also visited Florence and
Geneva, before settling in Berlin in 1904. His
first solo show came in 1912, and his earliest
paintings show the influence of the
impressionism|impressionsists. His work was
popular, and he was able to make a living from his
art.

Beckmann served as a medic in World War I, but was
dismissed after he suffered a nervous breakdown.
It is generally held that his experiences in the
war had a big effect on his art, and were an
important factor in pushing his style in a more
expressionism|expressionist direction.

In the aftermath of World War I he joined the New
Objectivity movement ("neue sachlichkeit")
characterized by a new realism.  With the
knowledge that reality cannot be fully achieved,
he revived realism, despised expressionism, and
included a cynical and socially critical posture
in his paintings.  This group coincided with
artists like Otto Dix and George Grosz, also from
Germany and a group that despised war.  Beckmann
himself was not involved in any political
movement, nor did he advertise his own political
opinions.  

Beckmann taught art in Frankfurt am Main from
1915, but was dismissed from his post by the Nazi
Party in 1933. At the beginning of the 30s, he
made visits to Paris to paint, and it was around
this time that he began to use the triptych
format, influenced in part by Hieronymus Bosch. 
Other influences include the mythical figures from
Delacroix and Rubens.

His art was condemned as Entartete Kunst
(degenerate art) by the Nazis in 1937, and a day
after the exhibition of degenerate art opened in
Munich, Beckmann moved to Amsterdam. In 1947,
assisted by his American patron, the department
store magnate Morton May, he was brought to St.
Louis, Missouri to teach one year at Washington
University, then later to New York City. He died
in 1950 of a myocardial infarction|heart attack
while on his way to see an exhibition of his work
at the Metropolitan Museum.

Beckmann painted a number of self-portraits,
including Self Portrait in Tuxedo (1927), which is
widely regarded as a classic. Many of his other
works represent scenes from everyday life. They
often show grotesque, mutilated bodies, and are
seen as commenting on the wrong-doings of the
German government in the 1920s and 1930s as well
as harking back to his World War I experiences.