Top Max Beckmann Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Max Beckmann Biography

Max Beckmann (February 12, 1884 – December 27, 1950) was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement. In the 1920s, he was associated with the New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit), an outgrowth of Expressionism that opposed its introverted emotionalism.

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Max Beckmann Quotes

Painting constantly appeared to me as the one and only possible achievement.

Achievement, Painting, Appeared, Constantly, Possible

There is nothing I hate more than sentimentality.

Appetizers, Hate, I Hate, Nothing, Sentimentality

My figures come and go, suggested by fortune or misfortune. I try to fix them divested of their apparent accidental quality.

Accidental, Divested, Figures, Quality, Trying

Art is creative for the sake of realization, not for amusement. . . for transfiguration, not for the sake of play.

Art, Creative, Play, Realization, Transfiguration

One of my problems is to find the Ego, which has only one form and is immortal - to find it in animals and men, in the heaven and in the hell which together form the world in which we live.

Animal, Heaven, Hell, Men, Problems, World

Often, very often, I am alone. My studio in Amsterdam, (Beckmann lived in the center of Amsterdam during World War 2. ) an enormous old tobacco storeroom is again filled in my imagination with figures from the old days and from the new, like an ocean moved by storm and sun and always present in my thoughts. Then shapes become beings and seem comprehensible to me in the great void and uncertainty of the space which I call god.

Call, Comprehensible, Like, Ocean, Space, War

I am seeking for the bridge which leans from the visible to the invisible through reality.

Bridges, Invisible, Reality, Visible

The world is rather shot to pieces [end of World War II - 1945], but the spectators climb out of their caves and pretend to have again become normal and customary humans who ask each other's pardon instead of eating one another or sucking each other's blood. The entertaining folly of war evaporates, distinguished boredom sits down again on the dignified old overstuffed chairs. . . May I report about myself that I have had a truly grotesque time, brim-full with work, Nazi persecutions, bombs, hunger, and again and again work - in spite of everything [a. o. using his bed sheets as canvas for the new paintings].

Become, Blood, Boredom, Report, Sucking, War

The important thing is first of all to have a real love for the visible world that lies outside ourselves as well as to know the deep secret of what goes on within ourselves.

Lies, Lying, Real, Secret, Visible

It is, of course, a luxury to create art and, on top of this, to insist on expressing one's own artistic opinion. Nothing is more luxurious than this. It is a game and a good game, at least for me; one of the few games which make life, difficult and depressing as it is sometimes, a little more interesting.

Depressing, Art, Games, Game, Create

Space, and space again, is the infinite deity which surrounds us and in which we are ourselves contained.

Deities, Deity, Infinite, Space, Surrounds

What are you? What am I? Those are the questions that constantly persecute and torment me and perhaps also play some part in my art.

Art, Constantly, Play, Questions, Torment

The greatest mystery of all is reality.

Reality, Mystery, Greatest

Painting is a very difficult thing. It absorbs the whole man, body and soul, thus have I passed blindly many things which belong to real and political life.

Life, Men, Passed, Political, Real, Thing

We will enjoy ourselves with the forms that are given us: a human face, a hand, the breast of a woman or the body of a man, a glad or sorrowful expression, the infinite seas, the wild rocks, the melancholy language of the black trees in the snow, the wild strength of spring flowers and the heavy lethargy of a hot summer day when Pan, our old friend, sleeps and the ghosts of midday whisper. This alone is enough to make us forget the grief of the world, or to give it form.

Summer, Spring, Grief, Enough, Breast, Enjoy

In principle, any abstraction of the object is allowed which has a sufficiently strong creative power behind it.

Allowed, Creative, Principle, Principles, Strong

What I want to show in my work is the idea which hides itself behind so-called reality. I am seeking for the bridge which leans from the visible to the invisible through reality. It may sound paradoxical, but it is in fact reality which forms the mystery of our existence.

Reality, Bridges, Ideas, Leans, Paradoxical, Existence

What I want to show in my work is the idea which hides itself behind so-called reality.

Hides, Ideas, Reality, Show, Want, Work

One of my problems is to find the self.

Problem, Problems, Self

I have never, God or whatever knows, prostrated myself to be famous, but I would meander through all the sewers of the world, through all degradations and humiliations, in order to paint. I have to do this. Until the last drop every vision that exists in my being must be purged; then it will be a pleasure for me to be rid of this damned torture

Damned, Degradation, Famous, Order, Purged, Vision

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