Scratched Up and Raw: The Print World of Max Beckmann

Max Beckmann (1884 –1950) was a German artist most known for his expressive style in both painting and printmaking. He rejected association with the German Expressionists in favor of the New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit), which was a movement deviating away from the deeply emotional aspects of Expressionism. What has always drawn me to Beckmann's print work is his passionate and raw line. His scratched, even ugly, lines are often counter-weighted against a delicate, almost tracery web which weaves his images together. There is intimacy between his lovers/characters, and then in a flip of reality we see his own deeply disturbed pain searing through us through his self-portrait series.

Max Beckmann was born into a middle-class family in Leipzig, Saxony, during the German Empire. He enrolled at the Weimar Academy of Arts in 1899 and, between 1903 and 1904, traveled to Paris, Geneva, and Florence. During WWI, Beckmann volunteered to work as a medical orderly. He served in Belgium, where he met fellow artist Erich Heckel. He was discharged in 1915 after suffering a nervous breakdown. In 1925 he was appointed professor to teach a master class at the Städelschule Academy of Fine Art in Frankfurt.

The successes of Beckmann’s early career changed once Adolf Hitler came into power. In 1933, the Nazi government labelled Beckmann a "cultural Bolshevik" and dismissed him from his teaching position in Frankfurt. In 1937 more than 500 of his works were confiscated from German museums, and several pieces were included in the now infamous Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich. That same year, Beckmann took his wife, left Germany, and lived a ten year self-imposed exile in Amsterdam.

After the war, Beckmann and his wife moved to the United States, and he taught art at Washington University in St. Louis. Beckmann then taught at the University of Colorado, Boulder, during the summer of 1949 and the following fall at the Brooklyn Museum Art School. He and his wife later moved to New York City where he died of a heart attack in 1950.

The trauma Beckmann experienced in the war moved his artwork away from most classical interpretations of the human figure to something distorted and fractured. His compositions became angled, broken and chaotic. There was no space to breathe or room to maneuver within. Ultimately, this scratched up distortion affected his view of himself, which can be easily seen in his featherly, yet raw-looking self-portraits.


Unlike several of his avant-garde contemporaries, Beckmann took up and advanced the tradition of figurative painting in a deeply personal form of modernism. He greatly admired the artwork of Cézanne, Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Bosch, Bruegel and Grünewald. His composition style is also rooted in the tradition of medieval stained glass, the early renaissance idea of the triptych and he expanded them to include contemporary events.

Beckmann saw the world as a tragedy of man's inhumanity to man, and he saw life as a carnival of human folly. His work remained intense and allegorical throughout his career, but after the mid-1920s his style of painting changed to include Expressionistic brushwork and brighter colors. Some of his imagery refers to the decadent glamor of the Weimar Republic's cabaret culture, but from the 1930s on, his works often contain mythologized references to the brutalities of the Nazis. His subjects and symbols expressed universal themes of terror, redemption, and the mysteries of eternity and fate.

As for his printmaking, Beckmann made a total of 373 prints, all black and white, most of them produced between 1914 and 1923. He preferred etching and drypoint, but also worked in lithography; and he made woodcuts. Most of his prints were issued by leading dealer-publishers, including Paul Cassirer and J. B. Neumann, in Berlin, and Reinhard Piper, in Munich, although in 1921 Beckmann signed an exclusive contract with J. B. Neumann.

Like some of his art colleagues, Beckmann’s work falls within art movements, never clearly embracing one over another, so he, like the artists Oscar Kokoshka and Frida Kahlo, remain unique and outside normal categorization.
Lastly, the Parisian novelist and art historian, Stephan Reimertz, published Max Beckmann’s biography Eine Liebe im Porträt. Minna Tube - Künstlerin im Schatten von Max Beckmann,
Publ: Rowohlt Tb. 2002

Awards & Major exhibitions:
1912 First solo show, Kunstverein, Magdeburg, and Grossherzogliches Museum für Kunst und Kunstgewerbe, Weimar
1926 First show in the United States, J. B. Neumann’s New Art Circle, New York
1927 Honorary Empire Prize for German Art and the Gold Medal of the City of Düsseldorf
1928 Städtische Kunsthalle, Mannheim
1930 exhibitions in Basle and Zurich
1938 First of numerous exhibitions at Curt Valentin’s Buchholz Gallery, New York
1948 First retrospective in the United States, the City Art Museum, Saint Louis
1949 First prize in the exhibition Painting in the United States, the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh
1964-65 Museum of Modern Art, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Art Institute of Chicago
1984 Nassau County suburban art museum, NY
1995 Museum of Modern Art
1996 Guggenheim Museum
1996 Rome and Valencia
1997 Madrid
1998 Zurich
1998 St. Louis
2000 Munich
2006 Frankfurt
2007 Amsterdam
2002 Centre Pompidou, Paris
2003 Tate Modern
2011 Städel,Frankfurt

'Estampas de La Raza' Exhibition Showcases Chicano Artists

In a couple of days (1/27/13) an important exhibition of  printmaking will close at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas. I was fortunate to see the exhibit firsthand upon a recent trip to San Antonio, and this is a first class view of contemporary Mexican American and Latino printmakers dating from the 1960s to the present. It is part of a gift from longtime print collectors Ricardo and Harriet Romo. I will address the exhibition first, and then provide information about the Romos, who were instrumental to bringing this exhibition to the public.

Estampas de la Raza features more than 60 prints by 44 artists. The subject of these images crosses traditional Latino cultural practice with social, political and angst. The diversity images, and artists gives the viewer insight into a popular, yet still unknown aspect of Latino concerns. Popular images of Frida Kahlo, tattoos, and the Virgin of Guadalupe serve as a part of the exhibit, but also defining the exhibit are the more personal statements of the artists - self-portraits as icon-like gang-bangers or the Virgen de Guadalupe. 

Colorful, hand-drawn prints of women in bars, all dressed up and expectantly waiting a client, crying cocks with their throats cut, the Statue of Liberty rising above the faceless brown people parading before it as they strive for citizenship. 

All of it all together gives a pretty good idea of Chicano concerns, their interests in self-image and the image they portray to people other than themselves. Richard Duardo's quad portrait of Frida Kahlo is inspired, basing itself upon the Latino perspective of an Andy Warhol and popular cultural idol worship. 

More popularly known is Esther Hernandez' iconic Sun Mad Raisins image of a skeleton happily holding the insecticide-poisoned grapes acidly speaks volumes of the travails of this country's migrant workers and their fight for better working conditions.

The play of Disney's Mickey Mouse and a Posada-inspired sharp-shooter, as seen below, show another blending of cultural humor. 

All in all, this exhibition packs a wallop, and gives a vivid, candid and provocative voice to the artists' represented. I came away with a better appreciation for this loud and proud group of images and sincerely hope this exhibit will travel the country so more people will become familiar with this genre. 

About the collectors....Harriett and Ricardo Romo started to collect art when they were teaching in Southern California in the late 1960s. They felt collecting art from the Chicano community would help support the young artists and build their cultural community. They worked with and purchased much art from East LA's printshop, Self Help Graphics & Art. After returning to Texas, the Romos, sought to support Coronado Studio, a printshop located in Austin.

They said they were inspired to collect from the artists who they met on their travels to mexico and the artists they saw in southern California. For anyone to be in a position to collect art is a fine thing indeed, but the Romos decided this area of printmaking was under-recognized. Their commitment to collect more in this vein was based upon the strong visual messages of these artists, and the reinforcement they saw their collecting had to helping artists continue working. Their efforts have helped artists forge a path in this society that doesn't always recognize the merits or worth of an image to make an impact. The Romos understand this and thankfully they are continuing to bring art to the masses with their gifts and their sponsorship. An interview with the Romos can be seen at http://chicanoarthistory.tumblr.com/post/33778460854/harriett-and-ricardo-romo-discuss-estampas-de-la

To give a little biographical information about the Romos, Ricardo Romo is a native of San Antonio, having grown up on its west side. He attended the University of Texas at Austin , holds a master's degree from Loyola Marymount University and a PhD. from UCLA Romo is an urban historian and  author of "East Los Angeles: History of a Barrio". 

His achievements include:

George W. Bush appointed him in 2002 to the President's Board of Advisers on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. 

Former Secretary of State Collin Powell appointed Romo in 2004 as a U.S. representative to the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Romo received the Isabel la Catolica award, the highest award given to non-Spanish subjects, bestowed by King Juan Carlos of Spain, in 2007. 

He also received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Texas Exes Alumni Association, in 2008.

He currently serves as the president of University of Texas at San Antonio, one of the fastest-growing colleges in the country.

Romo's wife, Harriett, is currently a sociology professor at UTSA. She also serves as director of the UTSA Mexico Center and the Bank of America Child and Adolescent Policy Research Institute (CAPRI). 

The Romos' private art collection includes works by Luis Jimenez, Carmen Lomas Garza, Cesar Martinez and Vincent Valdez, as well as print suites from Self Help Graphics and Coronado Studio. Due to the Romos' generosity, the McNay Art Museum is now known for having one of the best print collections of Chicano and Latino artists to be found anywhere.

A catalogue of the Estampas de la Raza exhibition is available through Amazon.

Pablo O'Higgins' Unique Trail in US/Mexican Printmaking

Pablo Esteban O'Higgins (born Paul Higgins Stevenson ,1904 - 1983) was an American-Mexican artist, illustrator and a blond-haired, blue-eyed Presbyterian  who became a celebrated Mexican muralist. He  was born in Salt lake City, UT and was raised between there and San Diego, CA. His father was a lawyer of blue-blood 'English of Mayflower' descent, and his mother  was a refined upper-middle class housewife. He had one grandfather who was Scots-Irish, who died before Pablo (then Paul Higgins) was born.  In 1922, he went to study at the Academy of Arts in San Diego, but soon afterward he became a student of and assistant to the famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. Rivera said if he ever had a son, he’d wanted him to be like O’Higgins. 

O'Higgins was so taken with Mexican culture from an early age when he lived on his father's rach in California. It was there that he met and became acquainted with the Mexican workers. As for their politics, that came in 1924 when after moving to Mexico permanently, he joined his mentor Rivera and became a member of the Mexican Communist Party (which he remained a member until 1947.)

From 1928-1930 Pablo O'Higgins worked on Cultural Missions in Durango, Hidalgo, Veracruz, and Zacatecas.  In 1930, he co-published, with Jean Charlot and Frances Toor, Las obras de José Guadalupe Posada, a Mexican engraver. In 1931 O'Higgins founded, together with Leopoldo Méndez and Juan de la Cabada, the Proletarian Intellectual League.  He also contributed illustrations to the newspaper of the USA Communist Party, called the Daily Worker.  

1933 was a busy year for O'Higgins. He was teaching drawing in primary schools. His illustrations won him a Soviet scholarship to go to Moscow to study at their Academy of Art. He also contributed artwork to Mexican Folkways magazine, and he co-founded the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists, LEAR). 

One of O'Higgins' major contributions to printmaking came In 1937, when he joined with fellow artists Leopoldo Méndez and Luis Arenal  and became co-founder of the world-famous political graphic arts workshop, Taller de Gráfica Popular ("People's Graphic Workshop"). The Taller became an inspiration to many politically-motivated artists and  a place for artists to speak their minds, so much so that it became a major forum for political artwork in Mexico.  Recently the Taller was commemorated with a publication and a tour of some of the artists' works  by some of the artists associated with the Taller... O’Higgins educational and printmaking contributions continued when he worked with San Francisco artists Byron Randall, Victor Arnautoff, and Adelyne Cross Erikson establish a graphic arts workshop in 1947. With seemingly endless energy, in 1947, he worked with Los Angeles printmakers Jules Heller and Arnold Mesches to establish the Los Angeles Graphic Arts Workshop, which was the predesessor of the now famous Tamarind Institute in New Mexico. O'Higgins also taught at the California Labor School in San Francisco in 1945 & 1949, and in 1948 he and Xavier Guerrero founded the Sociedad para el Impulso de las Artes Plásticas, and the Salón de Plástica Mexicana in 1949. 

Joining the National Assembly of Artists in 1952, O'Higgins exhibited his paintings at the Salón de Plástica Mexicana. In the late 1960s he traveled and taught mural painting courses in Russia and Eastern Europe. 

A side note *O'Higgins once followed Tina Modotti, the radical photographer, to Russia. In the 1950s, he was placed on the U.S. attorney general’s blacklist, and on a Mexican Govt. deportation list . Being from a well-to-do Anglo-American family, he kept quiet about his father’s 1915 involvement as an assistant attorney general in the  execution  of Utah miner and labor martyr Joe Hill. In 1959 Pablo O'Higgins married María de Jesús de la Fuente Casas, a lawyer from Monterrey , Nuevo León. 

O’Higgins is admired not only for his art but also for his love of Mexico and his determination to bridge the two countries and their cultures through art. O'Higgins painted the people he respected… the ordinary, hard-working Mexican campesinos and workers whom he respected as the “Real Mexicans”. His subject was their struggle for dignity. O'Higgins will be remembered for his desire to bridge the two cultures he loved, and for promoting the arts with  so many worthwhile organizations.

Particular noteworthy is that O'Higgins'portrait is included in a mural in Chicano Park, in San Diego County, the largest collection of Chicano murals in the U.S. He appears next to Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Pablo Picasso,  Che Guevara, and the Virgin of Guadalupe. 

Awards and Exhibitions:

San Francisco at the Art Center Gallery, 1925 and 1927 

John Levy Gallery,1931,

Gallery of Mexican Arts

Association of American Artists, 1943

Burial with honors at the El Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City

First prize, Salón Anual de Pintura, Grabado y Escultura of the INBA , 1959

Elías Sourausky Award in Arts, 1971 

He also exhibited in Cuba, Spain, Los Angeles and Mexico. 

He was the only non-native Mexican artist whose work was included in the first major exhibit of Mexican art held in the United States at the MOMA's,"Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art" ,New York, 1940.

Murals:
Ship Scalers Union, Seattle, WA, 1945
International Longshoremen’s & Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU) in Honolulu, HI, 1952. 
and a dozen others in Mexico