Zitate von Max Beckmann

5 0

Max Beckmann

Geburtstag: 12. Februar 1884
Todesdatum: 28. Dezember 1950

Max Carl Friedrich Beckmann war ein deutscher Maler, Grafiker, Bildhauer, Autor und Hochschullehrer. Beckmann griff die Malerei des ausgehenden 19. Jahrhunderts ebenso auf wie die kunsthistorische Tradition und formte einen figurenstarken Stil, den er ab 1911 der aufkommenden Gegenstandslosigkeit entgegensetzte.

Beckmann war in seiner frühen Zeit Mitglied der Berliner Secession, stilisierte sich dann aber lieber als Einzelgänger. Der Moderne, insbesondere Pablo Picasso und dem Kubismus, setzte er eine eigenwillige Räumlichkeit entgegen. Zudem entwickelte er eine erzählende und mythenschaffende Malerei, insbesondere in zehn Triptychen. Besondere Bedeutung kommt Beckmann als prägnantem Zeichner, Porträtisten und als subtilem Illustrator zu.

Zitate Max Beckmann

„Ich glaube, dass ich alles erreichen werde, was ich will, alles. Nur weiss ich nicht bestimmt, ob ich mich immer darüber freuen werde.“

— Max Beckmann
Frühe Tagebücher, Max Beckmann, 14. August 1903, S. 10; zitiert nach "Max Beckmann - Meisterwerke 1907 - 1950", ed. Karin von Mauer, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Verlag Gerd Hatje, Stuttgart 1994

Über Bücher

„Was würden wir armen Menschen machen, wenn wir uns nicht immer wieder eine Idee schaffen würden von Vaterland, Liebe, Kunst und Religion, mit der wir das finstere schwarze Loch immer wieder so ein bisschen verdecken können.“

— Max Beckmann
Briefe im Krieg, Max Beckmann

Über Liebe, Über Menschen, Über Liebe, Über Religion

„... denn das ist das einzig Neue, (in der Kunst) was es gibt. Die Gesetze der Kunst sind ewig und unveränderlich, wie das moralische Gesetz in uns.“

— Max Beckmann
Kritik auf Franz Marc in Pan, Heft 17, März 1912; zitiert nach Kat. Bielefeld 1983, S 28ff

Über Gesetze, Über Kunst

„... die unsagbaren Dinge des Lebens festzuhalten...... dieses schaurig zuckende Monstrum von Vitalität in glasklare scharfe Linien und Flächen einzusperren... - Beitrag von 1918 zu 'Schöpherische Konfession', Max Beckmann, in Schriften und Gespräche, S. 22“

— Max Beckmann

Über Leben

„Das Unsichtbare sichtbar zu machen durch die Realität... Entscheidend hilft mir dabei die Durchtastung des Raumes. - Höhe, Breite und Tiefe in die Fläche zu übertragen, so dass aus diesen drei Raumgegebenheiten sich die abstrakte Bildfläche des Raums gestaltet, die mir Sicherheit gibt gegen die Unendlichkeit des Raumes. - Meine Figuren kommen und gehen... Ich aber suche sie festzuhalten in der Entkleidung ihrer scheinbaren Zufälligkeit.“

— Max Beckmann
Londoner Rede von 1938, Max Beckmann, in Schriften und Gespräche, S. 49

Über Ehe

„I have such a passion for painting! I am continually working at form. In actual drawing and in my head, and during my sleep. Sometimes I think I shall go mad, this painful, sensual pleasures tires and torments me so much. Everything else vanishes, time and space, and I think of nothing but how to paint the head of the resurrected Christ... Or how shall I paint Minkchen [his wife Minna] now, with her knees drawn up and her head leaning on her hand against the yellow wall with her rose, or the sparkling light in the dazzling whiteness of the anti-aircraft shell-bursts in the leaden, sun drenched sky...“

— Max Beckmann
letter to his first wife Minna, from the front, 11 May, 1915; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 213

„Even our own cadaver-bones shall not hinder us from standing our ground until the very last, proud and tired in the face of the black wall that surrounds us.“

— Max Beckmann
Beckman's Diary, 10 October 1943, Amsterdam; as cited on: 'Arts in exile' http://kuenste-im-exil.de

„The trenches wound in meandering lines and white faces peered from dark dugouts – a lot of men were still preparing the positions, and everywhere among them there were graves. Where they sat, beside their dugouts, even between the sandbags, crosses stuck out. Corpses jammed in among them. It sounds like fiction – one man was frying potatoes on a grave next to his dugout. The existence of life here had already become a paradoxical joke.“

— Max Beckmann
a letter to his first wife Minna, from the front, 21 May, 1915; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 213

„Space and space again, is the infinite deity which surrounds us and in which we are ourselves contained.“

— Max Beckmann
p. 12

„Yesterday we came across a cemetery that had been completely destroyed by shellfire. The graves had been blown up, and the coffins lay about in the most uncomfortable positions. The shells had unceremoniously exposed their distinguished occupants to the light of day, and bones, hair, and bits of clothing could be seen through cracks in the burst-open coffins.“

— Max Beckmann
letter to his first wife Minna, from the front, 1915; as quoted in Max Beckmann, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 14

„The metaphysics of substance. The strange feeling which comes over us when we sense: this is skin – this is bone – all in a single vision that is completely unearthly. The dreaminess of our existence mixed at the same time with the indescribably sweet illusion of reality.“

— Max Beckmann
Beckmann's sketchbook - probably referring to his last triptych painting 'The Argonauts', he painted in 1950, the year Beckmann died

„Oh I wish that I could paint again. Paint is an instrument without which I cannot survive for any length of time. Whenever I even think of gray, green and white, I am overcome with quivers of lust. Then I wish that this war would end and that I might paint again.“

— Max Beckmann
Quote from Beckmann's letter to his first wife Minna, from the front, first World war, 1915; as quoted in Max Beckmann, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 14 Quote of Max Beckmann, one from a series of letters he wrote to his wife Minna Beckmann-Tube, being medic soldier at the front of World War 1.

„The Ego is the great veiled mystery of the world... I believe in it and in its eternal, immutable form. Its path is, in some strange and peculiar manner, our path. And for this reason I am immersed in the phenomenon of the Individual, the so-called whole Individual, and I try in every way to explain and present it. What are you? What am I? Those are the questions that constantly persecute and torment me and perhaps also play some part in my art.“

— Max Beckmann

„I am working here [Amsterdam] on my last big triptych, which will be a tremendous story, and which gives me a more intense life and exhilaration. My God, life is worth living!“

— Max Beckmann
In a letter to Stephan Lackner, Amsterdam, 1939; as quoted in Max Beckmann, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 5

„What is important to me in my work is the identity that is hidden behind so-called reality. I search for a bridge from the given present tot the invisible, rather as a famous cabalist once said, 'If you wish to grasp the invisible, penetrate as deeply as possible into the visible'.“

— Max Beckmann
In his public speech 'On my painting', for the exhibition 'Twentieth-Century German Art', London, 21 July 1938; as quoted in Max Beckmann, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 77

„Afternoon with Q. [Quappi, his second wife] on foot, looking for butter and coals – in vain.“

— Max Beckmann
Beckman's Diary, 1 June 1943, Amsterdam; as cited on: 'Arts in exile' http://kuenste-im-exil.de

Zitate von Max Beckmann

Max Beckmann

Ähnliche Autoren

Gesine Schwan2

Wolf Vostell1

Paul Klee3

Michael Ende30

Otto Dix3

Kurt Schwitters12

Friedrich Dürrenmatt27

Henry Miller6

Khalil Gibran15

Hermann Hesse12