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Lot Essay
Beckmann painted still lifes throughout his career, from his earliest works through the war years, during his time in Frankfurt and the period of exile in Amsterdam, to his final years in the United States.
Painted in Frankfurt in 1926, at the artist’s first high point of creativity, Stilleben mit Türkenbund (Blumen mit Zigarrenkiste) is typical of Beckmann’s works from the mid-1920s, when his style moved away from precision and detail and his painting started to become more vigorous and independent. As Beckmann’s wife recalled, he ‘never set up the things for his still lifes: he also scarcely ever made sketches for them. Whatever aroused and unleashed these images he generally painted directly on the canvas.’ (M. Beckmann, Mein Leben mit Max Beckmann, Munich, 1983, p. 146). This is evident in the spontaneous arrangement of the composition which focusses on a large vase of lilies formed by loose visible Expressionistic brushstrokes intertwining an everyday box set against a vast black background.
Beckmann typically included objects from his own domestic surroundings in his still lifes. He was greatly interested in the non-European objects that he possessed and enjoyed integrating them into his works. Here he shows the ornamental decoration of the cover of the box and the detail of the compartments.
‘Beckmann’s underlying intention was to revive the pictorial genres of still lifes and landscape, which had been treated as virtually identical by the cubists through the consistent fragmentation of forms’ (K. Schick, Max Becmann The Still Lifes, Munich 2014, p. 26). The artist wished to upgrade the genre and bring interest to the least important object which he has successfully achieved in Stilleben mit Türkenbund (Blumen mit Zigarrenkiste).
Painted in Frankfurt in 1926, at the artist’s first high point of creativity, Stilleben mit Türkenbund (Blumen mit Zigarrenkiste) is typical of Beckmann’s works from the mid-1920s, when his style moved away from precision and detail and his painting started to become more vigorous and independent. As Beckmann’s wife recalled, he ‘never set up the things for his still lifes: he also scarcely ever made sketches for them. Whatever aroused and unleashed these images he generally painted directly on the canvas.’ (M. Beckmann, Mein Leben mit Max Beckmann, Munich, 1983, p. 146). This is evident in the spontaneous arrangement of the composition which focusses on a large vase of lilies formed by loose visible Expressionistic brushstrokes intertwining an everyday box set against a vast black background.
Beckmann typically included objects from his own domestic surroundings in his still lifes. He was greatly interested in the non-European objects that he possessed and enjoyed integrating them into his works. Here he shows the ornamental decoration of the cover of the box and the detail of the compartments.
‘Beckmann’s underlying intention was to revive the pictorial genres of still lifes and landscape, which had been treated as virtually identical by the cubists through the consistent fragmentation of forms’ (K. Schick, Max Becmann The Still Lifes, Munich 2014, p. 26). The artist wished to upgrade the genre and bring interest to the least important object which he has successfully achieved in Stilleben mit Türkenbund (Blumen mit Zigarrenkiste).