Max beckmann self portrait

Max Beckmann
Self-Portrait with Horn, 1938
Oil on canvas
Neue Galerie New York and Private Collection
© 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Max Beckmann
Self-Portrait with Horn, 1938
Oil on canvas
Neue Galerie New York and Private Collection
© 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Max Beckmann created Self-Portrait with Horn (1938) after he fled Germany when the Nazis rose to power.

In an ambiguous gesture, he holds a horn in his hand, positioned between his mouth and his ear.

Max beckmann self portrait

Perhaps he intends to sound it like a shofar, to warn the world about what the Nazis would inflict upon humanity. Or maybe he is listening for a sound, for an indication of what is to come.

In 1938, after hearing a radio program by Adolf Hitler threatening the so-called “degenerate” artists with imprisonment or sterilization, Beckmann and his second wife, Quappi, retreated to Amsterdam.

A year earlier, the state-sponsored “Entartete Ku