Leipzig, Germany.- The Museum of Fine Arts, Leipzig is proud to present “Max Beckmann: Face to Face” on view at the museum through January 22nd. With 2 other exhibitions of Max Beckmann at major museums (“Beckmann and America” in the Städel Museum Frankfurt and “Max Beckmann. The Landscapes” in the Art Museum Basel), 2011 is offering an unprecedented opportunity to view the full range of the artist’s ouvre. The Leipzig exhibition is the first since the 1960s to focus entirely on Beckmann’s portraits. 58 paintings, loans from Germany and abroad, are shown alongside over 160 preparatory sketches, studies and related prints. The “Beckmann Dialogue” complements the exhibition with works by Marlene Dumas (born 1953 in Cape Town) and Alex Katz (born 1927 in New York). Both artists have provided important stimuli for contemporary portrait painting and list Max Beckmann as one of their central role models.
People from Beckmann’s circle of family and friends, all of whom were of pivotal importance in the artist’s path through life, are brought together in a classic portrait gallery, a Who’s Who of Beckmann’s life. In its genre-hopping presentation, the exhibition offers the fascinating opportunity to trace Beckmann’s creative process through almost all phases of a work, from the first flighty sketch to the completed painting. Max Beckmann’s lifework contains a plethora of portrait types: individual and double portraits, family and group portraits and also “hidden” portraits in the allegorical works, many of which are characterised by group depictions, teasing observers to discover familiar faces from other parts of the Beckmann oeuvre.
Numerous persons found in the paintings have been identified for the first time thanks to the academic research on the lexicon contained in the catalogue, listing roughly 240 people who accompanied Beckmann on the individual stages of his life. Beckmann’s work contains a large number of portraits depicting his two wives, Minna Beckmann-Tube, whom he divorced in 1925, and the significantly younger Mathilde (Quappi) von Kaulbach, whom he meets in Vienna in 1923. Quappi’s face and figure above all challenged him time and again, as we see not only in the number of her portraits found in paintings, drawings and prints, but also the fact that many female figures in Beckmann’s work bear a facial resemblance to Quappi. Beckmann repeatedly draws and paints friends such as Ugi and his wife Fridel Battenberg, members of the inner circle in Frankfurt am Main, where he taught at the Städel School in the 1920s. These are the years in which he strengthened his position as one of Germany’s outstanding artists and enjoyed international success. In his portrait painting, Max Beckmann reflected a very personal fabric of relationships – to his family, his wives and to his large circle of friends of acquaintances. The portraits of befriended artists, gallery-owners, publishers and art dealers confirm just how well-connected Beckmann was in the art business.
The Museum der bildenden Künste (Museum of Fine Arts) has over 7,000 square meters of display area and a collection containing some 3,500 paintings, 1,000 sculptures and 60,000 graphic works. It covers artworks from the Late Middle Ages to Modernity. The museum dates back to the founding of the “Leipzig Art Association” by Leipzig art collectors and promoters in 1837, and had set itself the goal of creating an art museum. On 10 December 1848, the association was able to open the “Städtische Museum” in the first public school on the Moritzbastei. Through major donations including from Maximilian Speck von Sternburg, Alfred Thieme and Adolf Heinrich Schletter the collection grew with time. In 1853, businessman and art collector Adolf Heinrich Schletter donated his collection under the condition that the city build a municipal museum within five years. Shortly before the deadline expired the museum was inaugurated on 18 December 1858. It was located on the Augustusplatz and was designed by Ludwig Lange in the style of the Italian Renaissance. From 1880 to 1886 the building was extended by Hugo Licht to accommodate the ever-growing collection. At the beginning of the 20th Century, Fritz von Harck donated a part of his collection to the museum. In 1937 the Nazis confiscated 394 paintings and prints mainly of Expressionism as “Degenerate art”. In the night of 4 December 1943, the building was destroyed by a British air raid, but fortunately, most of the collection had been removed for safe storage. After the destruction of the building on Augustusplatz, the museum began a 61-year odyssey through several interim arrangements. By the mid-1990s, the city decided to give the museum back their own building. On 4 December 2004, exactly 61 years after the destruction of the “Städtischen Museum” on Augustusplatz, the new museum opened at the former Sachsenplatz (Saxony Square). The rectangular building of the museum cost 74.5 million euros and was designed by the architects Karl Hufnagel, Peter Pütz and Michael Rafaelian.
Today’s collection includes approximately 3,500 paintings, 1,000 sculptures and 60,000 graphic sheets.OIt includes works from the Late Middle Ages to the present, focusing on Old German and Early Netherlandish art of the 15th and 16th Century, Italian art from the 15th to 18th Century, Dutch art of the 17th Century, French art of the 19th and German art from the 18th to 20th Century. Important parts of the collection are works by Dutch and German Old Masters like Frans Hals and Lucas Cranach the Elder, Romantics like Caspar David Friedrich, and representatives of the Düsseldorf school of painting such as Andreas Achenbach. The highlight of the sculpture collection is the Beethoven sculpture by Max Klinger. One entire floor of the museum is dedicated to a comprehensive display of the works of Max Klinger and Max Beckmann. In the field of Modern Art, the museum is has a large colleciton of Leipzig School works by artists such as Werner Tübke, Bernhard Heisig, and Wolfgang Mattheuer as well as significant works by Neo Rauch and Daniel Richter. Visit the museum’s website at … http://www.mdbk.de/