Max Beckmann

Max Beckmann rejected the labels applied to his work—Expressionist, though he was, and later associated with New Objectivity—insisting instead on his own path through modernism. Born in Leipzig in 1884, he survived the First World War as a medical orderly, an experience that shattered his academic style and pushed him toward distortion and psychological intensity. He taught at the Städelschule in Frankfurt during the prosperous Weimar years, building a reputation through major exhibitions and retrospectives.