Max BECKMANN - Departure (1932-1935)

 

Departure

1932-1935
Oil painting on canvas (215,5x314 cm)
Museum of Modern Art, New York

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A very strong triptych, in which horror and brutality are contrasted with peace and serenity. On the sides we find nocturnal scenes of torture and degradation in which men and women are subjected to terrible suffering; in the central panel we find spiritual figures on a sea that reaches as far as the horizon.

Beckmann has created a series of nine triptychs, this is considered the most important, inspired by the political events in Germany in the thirties, a time in which with the advent of Nazism even the future of art was strongly questioned.

Beckmann never joined any art movement; this work, however, brings him very close to expressionism since it reveals a strong evocative power of the artist's own feelings.

In 1938 he moved to Amsterdam due to political persecution. The last three years of his life were spent in the United States, where he became one of the most important ambassadors of contemporary German art.

Comparing artists: Bosch, Ensor, Heckel, Kokoschka, Orozco, Siqueiros