Max Beckmann: Music and Welttheater

This talk explores the life and work of celebrated New Objectivist painter Max Beckmann (1884-1950). At a time when many of his artistic peers turned towards pure abstractionism, Beckmann remained within a stringently figurative idiom, orchestrating his monumental canvases through reimagined mythologies, enigmatic allegories, subtle political critiques, and playful musical motifs. His service in the medical corps during the First World War precipitated a mental breakdown that profoundly transformed his art. The impressionistic style and muted palette of his early years gave way to riotous colour, fractured forms, and harrowed figures that captured the alienation and tension of urban modernity. This talk traces Beckmann’s tumultuous biography, his revolutionary artistic theories, and his most celebrated works, with a particular focus on the often-overlooked role of music in his life and practice, responding to the artist’s own question to his wife, Quappi: “Do you hear the noise of my paintings?”.

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