Curated by Didier Ottinger

Born in Leipzig, schooled in Weimar, Max Beckmann might have turned out to be another Bauhaus artist had he not set his sights on Paris and, later, Berlin. As a belated Symbolist in the tradition of Hans von Marées, he produced an unforgettable series of devotional triptychs. As an incisive Neue Sachlichkeit portraitist and chronicler, he nailed the decadence of the Weimar Republic. And as a political exile in St. Louis, he practiced a neo-mannerism that puts Thomas Hart Benton to shame and presages early Pollock. Now this first French retrospective, curated by the Pompidou’s Didier Ottinger, lays out the breadth of Beckmann’s achievement in all its glory.

— Brooks Adams