New exhibition explores how Max Beckmann's hard-edged signature style first emerged in his drawing

"The paintings of the German artist Max Beckmann are easy to recognise but hard to categorise. Often mislabelled as an Expressionist or else vaunted-to his chagrin-as a leading figure of the Weimar era's New Objectivity movement, Beckmann (1884-1950) was a singular, wilful figure, with a sharp but ethereal palette and a crowd of recurring figures that included circus characters, street toughs and his own menacing, mask-like face."

"The war strongly affected Beckmann, with his experience as a medic leading to an apparent breakdown in 1915. But the conflict also made him a major artist by wholly reconfiguring his art. His hard-edged signature style first emerged in his drawing, Freyberger says, and coincided with a new approach to drawings generally, which by the 1920s had gone from painting studies to autonomous works of art."

Max Beckmann produced distinctive paintings and recurring figures including circus performers, street toughs and a mask-like self-portrait. An exhibition at Frankfurt's Städel Museum concentrates on eighty of his drawings, drawn from major international collections. The show traces his development from pre-First World War experiments with Post-Impressionism to the traumatic wartime period when his medic experience precipitated a 1915 breakdown and radically reconfigured his art. Beckmann's hard-edged signature style first crystallized in his drawings in the 1920s, when drawings shifted from preparatory studies to autonomous works. His 1925 marriage to Mathilde "Quappi" von Kaulbach made her a recurrent muse.

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