Beckmann & America

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Max Beckmann (1884–1950) moved to the United States in the late summer of 1947, and would spend the last three years of his life there. Impressively, Beckmann was able to make the utmost use of this radical (and late) relocation and was able to bring about significant transformations in his painting―producing among other works his triptych masterpiece “The Argonauts”―while also teaching at the art schools of St Louis, Missouri, and at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, where he also found time to mount a retrospective of prints and drawings. The vastness of the American continent, with its unending landscapes and roads, and its vast cities embodying an energetic modernist optimism all combined to propel Beckmann--who had never before experienced geographic space on such an imposing scale―into an extraordinary fervor of productivity. Today, Beckmann’s last years seem all the more impressive when seen in relation to the concurrent emergence of abstract painting in New York and San Francisco (Philip Guston and Nathan Oliveira being among Beckmann’s most vocal advocates at the time). This Art to Hear companion to Beckmann & America looks at these decisive final years through a guided audio tour of key works.