
The Street, plate three from Die Hölle
<p>This chaotic image introduces Max Beckmann’s interest in observing the variety of social types that surrounded him in the early Weimar Republic, including the wounded veteran at the right of this scene. Veterans were an ever-present sign of the war, which both left many of them crippled and led to the economic crisis forcing many to beg on the streets. Next to the veteran in this image, a bourgeois man in a bowler carries away another figure who is perhaps injured or incapacitated. Whether he is a revolutionary or wounded everyman, the crowds ignore this odd disruption in their midst.</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1919
- Dimensions
- Image: 67.5 × 53.5 cm (26 5/8 × 21 1/8 in.); Sheet: 87 × 61 cm (34 5/16 × 24 1/16 in.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- Max Beckmann
Artist

Painting
Max Carl Friedrich Beckmann was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement. In the 1920s, he was associated with the New Objectivity, an outgrowth of Expressionism that opposed its introverted emotionalism. Even when dealing with light subject matter like circus performers, Beckmann often had an undercurrent of moodiness or unease in his works. By the 1930s, his work became more explicit in its horrifying imagery and distorted forms with combination of brutal realism and social criticism, coinciding with the rise of Nazism in Germany.
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More by Max Beckmann
Birdplay
1949 · Pen and black ink, with scraping, over charcoal, on cream laid paper
Women Fishing
1949 · Pastel and charcoal with stumping on cream wove paper
Composition (Komposition) from the illustrated book Max Beckmann
1948 · Lithograph
Woman with Fish (Frau mit Fisch) from the illustrated book Max Beckmann
1948 · Lithograph
1. Woman with Fish (Frau mit Fisch) 2. Composition (Komposition) from the illustrated book Max Beckmann
1948 · Two lithographs
Circus, plate 12 from Day and Dream
1946 · Lithograph on cream wove paper
Record
Verified by WattsOS- Artist
- Max Beckmann
- Year
- 1919
- Dimensions
- Image: 67.5 × 53.5 cm (26 5/8 × 21 1/8 in.); Sheet: 87 × 61 cm (34 5/16 × 24 1/16 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1919-085383
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified





