Beckmann & America

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) moved to the United States in the late summer of 1947, and spent the last three years of his life there. Impressively, Beckmann made the utmost use of this radical relocation and brought about significant transformations in his painting--producing, among other works, his triptych masterpiece, “The Argonauts”--while also teaching in St. Louis, Missouri, and at the Brooklyn Museum, where he also mounted a retrospective of prints and drawings. The vastness of the American continent, with its unending landscapes and roads and its vast cities embodying energetic modernist optimism, propelled Beckmann into an extraordinary fervor of productivity. This volume looks at these decisive final years, which produced so many key works for the Expressionist master.