Max Beckmann (1884-1950)

This picture was executed by Beckmann at a crucial point in his career. In 1931 the Museum of Modern Art in New York had held its exhibition German Painting and Sculpture, the first exhibition of German art to be held in the United States. In this exhibition, which was organised by Alfred H. Barr, Beckmann was best represented of all painters. In 1932, Ludwig Justi, director of the National Gallery in Berlin dedicated one entire room in the National Gallery to the permanent display of Beckmann's works. (See Max Beckmann and Paris, Saint Louis and Zurich, 1998, p. 11.)

The present work was executed at a time when Beckmann was enjoying international recognition and yet, at home, in the same year he was denounced by the National Socialists. As a result Beckmann left Frankfurt for Berlin in the autumn of the same year. Herbstblumen, signed with 'F' for Frankfurt and the year '1932', is thought to be one of the last works he painted in Frankfurt.

Tobia Bezzola writes: 'The floral still life is a frequently recurring motif in Max Beckmann's work, appearing in nearly a tenth of the approximately 800 paintings that comprise his painterly oeuvre. The floral still life is also one of the themes that accompanied the artist through all the stylistic phases of his career. It appears most frequently during the period from the mid-1920s to the late 1930s, and again during the last years of his life following his emigration to the United States... Beckmann used floral still lives in developing his painterly bravura... Collectors and art dealers ordered them again and again from Beckmann... Like Henri Matisse, whose late still lifes this work calls to mind, Beckmann, proceeding on the basis of a masterful command of form, permitted himself to experiment with colour producing paintings that still appear fresh and new today' (T. Bezzola, The Joy of Color, Jerusalem, 1998-99, p. 212).