… with Cecily Brown, Ella Kruglyanskaya, and Dana Schutz

The three artists are born or are living in the USA and have admired Max Beckmann’s oeuvre since the beginning of their work. Outside Germany, Beckmann had ­always been regarded as the »most German of all artists«. The Valkyrie (l.) was one of the first paintings after his arrival in the United States in 1947. Cecily Brown delivered the impetus for the exhibition and publi­cation, in which numerous works by Max Beckmann, both private and museum-owned, enter into dialogue with current works by the three painters, now part of the generation of grandchildren. In ­particular, it is his »Letters to a Woman Painter« – a speech given shortly after his arrival in the USA to students at Stephens College in Columbia – that receive metaphorical replies. In Cecily Brown’s paintings, created specifically for this occasion, the influence is primarily of an atmospheric nature – ­references to Max Beckmann’s contours and hues are rather apparent. Ella Kruglyanskaya shows ­portraits of women, the canvas almost bursting with their vitality, and they quite obviously caricature the bar and coffeehouse staff of the master. Dana Schutz combines Max Beckmann’s recurring motifs in large-format works. In this way she accumulates the impressions and thereby quite closely approximates his world. Thus all three artists present autonomous works that attest to the timelessness of the »most German of all artists«.

Exhibition:
CFA Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, 8/6 – 13/7/2019