Reclining Nude

Max BeckmannWW-1929-132974

1929·Oil on canvas·83.4 × 119 cm (32 7/8 × 46 13/16 in.)

Reclining Nude depicts Mathilde Q. Beckmann (known as Quappi), the artist’s second wife and a talented singer and violinist. During his early career spent in Germany, Max Beckmann criticized the French avant-garde; by the mid-1920s, however, he began to identify with artists working in Paris, and by 1929 he was living, painting, and spending the majority of his time in the city. This painting of Quappi, nude and in a traditional artistic posture of repose, evokes similar compositions by Beckmann’s contemporaries <a href="https://www.artic.edu/collection?artist_ids=Henri+Matisse">Henri Matisse</a> and <a href="https://www.artic.edu/collection?artist_ids=Pablo+Picasso">Pablo Picasso</a>. This is one of thirty-five works that comprise the Winterbotham Collection. <a href="https://www.artic.edu/the-winterbotham-collection">Click here to learn more about the collection.</a>

Catalogue

Year: 1929
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 83.4 × 119 cm (32 7/8 × 46 13/16 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Max Beckmann

Artist

Max Beckmann

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.

New York, NY, USA

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