Beckmann, Max

Max Beckmannwas born in Leipzig in 1884 to a family of farmers. He began his formal studies in 1900 at the Weimar Art Academy and moved to Paris soon after with his new wife. Drafted into World War I, he was deemed unfit to serve in the Second, and spent the war years in Germany, outlawed by Hitler from exhibiting his "degenerate" paintings. After the war, he came to America, taking up the post of Painter-in-Residence at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. In the late 1940s he moved to Manhattan, where he died of a heart attack en route to see his work in a show at The Metropolitan M...