Max Beckmann @ The Saint Louis Art Museum.
St. Louis Art Museum holds the world's largest collection of Max Beckmann paintings. These works are an absolute treasure trove and a real feather in the cap for that museum. Whenever I visit STL I make a pilgrimage to view these wonderful paintings. Beckman was influential to me in my studies and holds a special place in my creative perspective. His rich handling of thick paint and texture, crazed whores, fishermen, clowns, laborers, circus performers and kings are haunting as well as absurd. Obviously his influence over modern painting can go with out saying, at least by me. As many of us know Beckmann was a leading German modernist/expressionist whose work was deemed perverse by Nazi Germany in the 1930's and he fled to the United States after WWII. "Beckmann spent the years of World War Two in Germany, outlawed by Hitler from exhibiting, but his paintings, though branded as "degenerate by the Third Reich, were never confiscated or destroyed. He was drafted, but rejected as unfit. After the war he came to America where he and his wife lived in Missouri. Beckman was a Painter in residence at Washington University in St. Louis" Richard E. Schiff ASL SoHo ART. Thus through a local collector SLAM obtained the bulk of Beckman's prominent works.
This ongoing gallery exhibit at the St. Louis Art Museum is a must see! Go to SLAM http://www.slam.org
This ongoing gallery exhibit at the St. Louis Art Museum is a must see! Go to SLAM http://www.slam.org
once again a very interesting post ... reminds one of the old disposition of paintings at the Nelson : several "impressionist" works followed by "expressionist" works, notably a Beckmann, as if there were some sort of logical connexion or evolution involved ... at snooty parties one could always tell if someone's visual art culture was formed by repeated visits to that museum (a quick pass through the "impressionist/modern" rooms prior to getting in line in the court café buffet) when he or she would make hollow references to "de kooning", "beckmann" ... those were the days, anymore one has to be more clever to hide one's ignorance
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