Max Beckmann, Germany's greatest living artist (before Hitler), was packing to leave Holland, teach at the Chicago Art Institute, when invasion swallowed him in the spring of 1940. Last week, Chicago gave missing Max Beckmann his biggest one-man show in the U.S., at the plush-lined, modern-art-conscious Arts Club.
Painted with broad brushwork reminiscent of Georges Rouault's (TIME, Nov. 25, 1940), the show's 58 pictures depicted shadowy landscapes, sprawling human figures colored with the dull sheen of cast iron and stove polish. Weird, mystical canvases, as big as murals, showed mind-wrecking concepts like birth and death. Many, obscurely symbolic, writhed with brilliantly colored...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
