1884-1950 was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer. Although he is usually 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. He was born into a middle-class family in Leipzig, Saxony. From his youth he pitted himself against the old masters. His traumatic experiences of World War I, in which he served as a medic, coincided with a dramatic transformation of his style from academically correct depictions to a distortion of both figure and space, reflecting his altered vision of himself and humanity.He is known for the self-portraits he painted throughout his life, their number and intensity rivalled only by Rembrandt and Picasso. Well-read in philosophy and literature, he also contemplated mysticism and theosophy in search of the "Self". As a true painter-thinker, he strove to find the hidden spiritual dimension in his subjects. (Beckmann's 1948 "Letters to a Woman Painter" provides a statement of his approach to art.) In the Weimar Republic of the Twenties, Beckmann enjoyed great success and official honors. In 1927 he received the Honorary Empire Prize for German Art and the Gold Medal of the City of D??sseldorf; the National Gallery in Berlin acquired his painting The Bark and, in 1928, purchased his Self-Portrait in Tuxedo.In 1925 he was selected to teach a master class at the Städelschule Academy of Fine Art in Frankfurt. Some of his most famous students included Theo Garve, Leo Maillet and Marie-Louise Von Motesiczky. His fortunes changed with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler, whose dislike of Modern Art quickly led to its suppression by the state. In 1933, the Nazi government bizarrely called Beckmann a "cultural Bolshevik"and dismissed him from his teaching position at the Art School in Frankfurt. In 1937 more than 500 of his works were confiscated from German museums, and several of these works were put on display in the notorious Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich.For ten years, Beckmann lived in poverty in self-imposed exile in Amsterdam, failing in his desperate attempts to obtain a visa for the US. In 1944 the Germans attempted to draft him into the army, despite the fact that the sixty-year-old artist had suffered a heart attack. The works completed in his Amsterdam studio were even more powerful and intense than the ones of his master years in Frankfurt, and included several large triptychs, which stand as a summation of Beckmann's art. After the war, Beckmann moved to the United States, and during the last three years of his life, he taught at the art schools of Washington University in St. Louis (with the German-American painter and printmaker Werner Drewes) and the Brooklyn Museum. He suffered from angina pectoris and died after Christmas 1950, struck down by a heart attack in Manhattan.Many of his late paintings are now displayed in American museums.   Related Paintings of Max Beckmann :. | landscape with woodcutters | cirkus caravan | The Night | Das Nizza in Frankfurt am Main | Water tower in Hermsdorf |
Related Artists:
anna maria thelott
Anna Maria Thelott, född 1683, död 1710, var en svensk konstnär. Thelott var en av de första självförsörjande och professionella kvinnliga konstnärerna i Skandinavien. Anna Maria Thelott var dotter till instrumentmakaren och konstnären Philip Jacob Thelott d.ä., som ursprungligen kom från Schweiz, och syster till konstnären Philip Jacob Thelott d.y. Hon arbetade redan som barn sin med far och sina bröder i arbetet med att illustrera Olof Rudbeck d.ä.:s "Campus Elysii" och "Atlantica", och bidrog snart till hushållets försörjning genom att ensam utföra olika konstnärliga arbeten mot betalning, vilket gjorde henne till landets troligen första kvinnliga yrkeskonstnär. Familjen bodde ursprungligen i Uppsala, men flyttade år 1702 till Stockholm efter den stora stadsbranden då en stor del av Uppsala brann ned. Thelott var en mångsidig konstnär som var kunnig på en rad områden; hon utförde träsnitt och kopparstick förutom teckning och illustrationer med allegoriska och religiösa motiv, miniatyrer och bilder av djur och landskapsmålningar. Hon utförde elva träsnitt av tyska städer med tillhörande informativ text på uppdrag av Posttidningen år 1706 och anlitades för att illustrera Peringskiölds arbeten. År 1710 dog Anna Maria Thelott i Stockholm som en av många offer för den sista pesten i Sverige. På Uppsala universitetsbibliotek finns en skissbok av henne utförd 1704-1709.
Thomas Couture
1815-1879 French Thomas Couture Location French painter and teacher. A student of Antoine-Jean Gros in 1830-38 and Paul Delaroche in 1838-9, he demonstrated precocious ability in drawing and was expected to win the Prix de Rome. He tried at least six times between 1834 and 1839, but achieved only second prize in 1837 (entry untraced). Disgusted with the politics of the academic system, Couture withdrew and took an independent path. He later attacked the stultified curriculum of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and discouraged his own students from entering this institution. He first attained public notoriety at the Paris Salon with Young Venetians after an Orgy (1840; Montrouge, priv. col., see Boime, p. 85), the Prodigal Son (1841; Le Havre, Mus. B.-A.) and the Love of Gold (1844; Toulouse, Mus. Augustins). These early canvases are treated in a moralizing and anecdotal mode; the forms and compositional structures, like the debauched and corrupt protagonists, are sluggish and dull. Yet what made his work seem fresh to the Salon audience was his use of bright colour and surface texture derived from such painters as Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps and Eugene Delacroix, while his literary bent and methodical drawing demonstrated his mastery of academic tradition. The critics Thophile Gautier and Paul Mantz (1821-95) proclaimed him as the leader of a new school that mediated between the old and the new, and looked to him for a revitalization of Salon painting. The air of compromise his works projected made him appear a cultural representative of the juste milieu policies of Louis-Philippe.
AMBERGER, Christoph
German Painter, ca.1500-1562 German painter and draughtsman. His family came from the Upper Palatinate. He served his apprenticeship in Augsburg, probably with Leonhard Beck, whose daughter Barbara he married. He became a master on 15 May 1530 but rarely signed his work. He was in northern Italy and Venice c. 1525-7. His full-length pendant portraits of a husband and wife (both 1525; Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.) show Venetian influence, and the portrait of Anton Welser (1527; priv. col., see 1980 exh. cat., p. 98) is in the Italian style. According to Sandrart, during the Imperial Diet of 1530 in Augsburg Amberger painted a portrait of Emperor Charles V to the Emperor's satisfaction, but the surviving work (Berlin, Gem?ldegal.) dates from 1532, based on the age given. In the decades that followed, Amberger was the favourite portrait painter of ambitious merchant families, such as the Fugger, who belonged to guilds but were connected with the nobility by family or marriage ties.