|  |
Max Beckmann - Exile in Amsterdam
14.09.2007 - 27.01.2008
Exhibition | PINAKOTHEK DER MODERNE | KUNST
In cooperation with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the Pinakothek der Moderne Munich shows an exhibition on Max Beckmann's period of exile in Amsterdam. During the ten years he spent in the Netherlands he completed around a third of all his works. It was a period in which he reacted with incomparable intensity and creative energy to his immediate historical and biographical situation.
Munich is also the place where the inhumane cultural politics of National Socialism were articulated in particularly stark form with the opening of the »Haus der deutschen Kunst« in 1937 and the exhibition »Degenerated Art«. This led Max Beckmann to decide there and then to emigrate to Amsterdam. His horrified reaction to developments in Germany, the physical and psychological tension of living in exile all served to mobilise forces within him that found expression in an abundance of outstanding works.
It is against this background, which also highlights the controversial nature of the cultural and political aspects of the time, that the exhibition is not only relevant as a way of a familiarising oneself with the works Max Beckmann. Seventy years after the exhibition »Degenerated Art« it also presents us with the need for a renewed confrontation and revision of this critical period of German history.
The realisation of the exhibition had been only possible by the generous encouragement of the
Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne  www.artmentor.ch, the Ernst von Siemens Kunststiftung www.ernst-von-siemens-kunststiftung.de, the Stiftung Pinakothek der Moderne www.stipimo.de and the Theo Wormland Stiftung www.wormland.de |
|
|
