The National Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, with the collaboration of the Community of Madrid, presents the temporary exhibition Beckmann. Exile Figures, until 27 January 2019.
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Max Beckmann was born in Leipzig in 1884 and studied at the School of Fine Arts in Weimar. In 1904 he moved to Berlin, where he soon made a name for himself as one of the most outstanding artists of his generation. With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 he volunteered for the Army as a medical orderly. In 1915 he was discharged from military service and settled in Frankfurt. During the immediate postwar period he resurfaced to become one of the main figures in the German art world of his time and was appointed as a professor at the prestigious Städelschule. After the arrival of the Nazi party in power he was expelled from his post and lived in a sort of inner exile in Berlin, under cover of the anonymity of the big city. In 1937 some of his best known pictures were included in the Degenerate Art exhibition, organized by the Nazis to stigmatize modern art. Beckmann felt threatened and left Germany to go an live in Amsterdam. Unfortunately the German Army invaded Holland in 1939 and the painter had to resign himself to living not only in exile but in semi-clandestinity. After the end of the war he settled in the United States. He died in New York in 1950. (Source: Exhibition program)