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Lot Essay
The present lithograph with hand-colouring is Max Beckmann's final self-portrait in the print medium, showing him aged 62, his broad head almost fully frontal, his hand raised holding the ubiquitous cigarette before him. He seems to look towards, yet somehow through, the viewer. It is the empty, un-seeing stare of a person looking inside themselves, caught up in memories and reflections. 1946 was the last year of his ten year exile in Amsterdam, having left Germany in 1937 as a reaction to the 'degenerate art' policy. The following year, in 1947, he received a visa for the USA, where he would live and work as an art teacher for the final three years of his life.
Max Beckmann was only seventeen when he made his first printed self-portrait, depicting himself as an isolated, screaming head (Hofmaier 2). In the intervening forty-five years he returned to his own likeness as a subject no fewer than thirty-five times, rivalling Rembrandt as possibly the greatest self-portraitist in the history of printmaking.
Max Beckmann was only seventeen when he made his first printed self-portrait, depicting himself as an isolated, screaming head (Hofmaier 2). In the intervening forty-five years he returned to his own likeness as a subject no fewer than thirty-five times, rivalling Rembrandt as possibly the greatest self-portraitist in the history of printmaking.