28 - MAX BECKMANN

MAX BECKMANN (1884 Leipzig – 1950 New York City) The Smoker (Self-Portrait), 1916 Drypoint on handmade paper with "Van Gelder Zonen" watermark. 17.5 × 12.5 cm (sheet size approx. 34.8/35.2 × 26.5 cm). Signed and dated in pencil at the lower right (19)16. Numbered at the lower left; additionally inscribed “Max Beckmann Self-Portrait” at the edge of the sheet. Framed behind glass in a mat. Copy 8/20. Published by Paul Cassirer, Berlin, 1918. Minimal crease marks outside the image. The sheet is in very good condition. WVZ: Hofmaier 98 II B Provenance: Private collection, Saxony Self-portraits run through Beckmann’s oeuvre over five decades and rank among the most compelling works produced by 20th-century art. In most of them, he holds a cigar or cigarette—smoking is as inseparable from his image as the artist as it is from Picasso’s. In this drawing, the smoke rings float before his head: large, precisely formed, the result of a skill honed over many years. As early as 1903, Beckmann noted in his diary how he slowly blew cigarette smoke in front of him, shaped it into rings, and watched them intently. Even earlier, in one of his first self-portraits, he is depicted in profile at the age of sixteen, watching the soap bubbles he has created with a meerschaum pipe. The process is the same, and it remained with him until the very end. Beckmann’s final years were marked by a weak heart. Starting in the 1940s, his diaries contain entries about angina pectoris attacks, noted under a harmless-sounding abbreviation; at the same time, they include occasional resolutions to quit smoking. He died in 1950, at the age of sixty-six, of heart failure. The smoke ring, which appears on this page as a feat of artistry, was also what likely shortened his life significantly.