Max Beckmann (February 12, 1884 – December 27, 1950) was a German painter, draftsman , printmaker , sculptor , and writer. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement. [1] In the 1920s, he was associated with the New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit ), an outgrowth of Expressionism that opposed its introverted emotionalism. Max Beckmann was born into a middle-class family in Leipzig , Saxony . From his youth he pitted himself against the old masters. His traumatic experiences of World War I , in which he volunteered as a medical orderly, coincided with a dramatic transformation of his style from academically correct depictions to a distortion of both figure and space, reflecting his altered vision of himself and humanity. [2] He is known for the self-portraits painted throughout his life, their number and intensity rivaled only by those of Rembrandt and Picasso . Well-read in philosophy and literature, Beckmann
