On my Painting

Compiled and edited by George Scrivani for Hanuman Books in 1988, On My Painting brings together six texts by pioneering German artist Max Beckmann, who fled Nazi Germany after his paintings – increasingly dark and reflecting the existential terror of the time – were branded “degenerate”. In addition to the title essay, this volume contains short pieces entitled “Creative Credo” and “The New Program”, excerpts from his diary, three “Letters to a Woman Painter” and the text of a speech delivered to the philosophy faculty of Washington University in St. Louis, shortly before his death in 1950.

Max Beckmann (1884-1950) was a German artist whose work includes paintings and sculptures. A rising star of the Weimar era, Beckmann left Germany after the rise of Adolf Hitler and went into exile in Amsterdam before taking up a teaching post in the United States in 1947. He died of a heart attack in 1950. Although he rejected the label “Expressionism”, he is often associated with this movement and exerted great influence on its subsequent American offshoots.