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max beckmann 1884-1950
Begegnung in der Nacht (Meeting in the Night)
Signed and dated F.28
White and colored chalk on paper
42 by 19 in. 106.7 by 48.3 cm.
Provenance: Catherine Viviano Gallery, New York; Acquired from the above on October 1, 1959
Exhibited: Zurich, Kunsthaus, Max Beckmann, 1930, no. 91; Princeton, The Art Museum, Princeton University, The Stanley J. Seeger Jr. Collection, 1961, no. 26; Austin, University Art Museum, The University of Texas, Not So Long Ago. Art of the 1920s in Europe and America, 1972; Bielefeld, Kunsthalle, Max Beckmann, Aquarelle und Zeichnungen, 1903-1950, 1977, no. 124; Frankfurt-am-Main, Stadtische Galerie im Kunstinstitut, Max Beckmann Frankfurt 1915-1933, 1983-84, no. 159; Cologne, Josef Haubrich Kunsthalle, Max Beckmann, 1984; Dusseldorf, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Max Beckmann, Die Nacht, 1997, no. 78
Dr. Siegfried Gohr has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Between the years of 1915 and 1933, Beckmann lived and worked primarily in Frankfurt-am-Main, where he taught at the Kunstgewerbeschule/Stadelschule, intermittently traveling to Paris and Berlin. During these years, the artist explored themes of struggle and frustration in much of his work, no doubt influenced by the tension extant during the aftermath of World War I. An aesthete with pan-European sophistication, Beckmann grew increasingly dissatisfied with the political situation prevalent in central Europe at that time. In an insightful, albeit humorously self-derisive autobiography, Beckmann wrote in 1924, "Beckmann has been made ill by his indestructible preference for the defective invention called 'Life'." (Quoted in Max Beckmann, Retrospective, (exhibition catalogue), The Saint Louis Art Museum, 1984, p. 454).
Meeting in the Night, which Beckmann completed towards the end of his time in Frankfurt, clearly expresses these themes of frustration and perceived inequity through the iconography of opposition. In this work, the two central characters are presented as direct contrasts to each other: the dark, upright, tuxedo-clad gentleman looks on untroubled as the white, upside-down, nude woman is shackled and unable to see her captor. Beckmann's message and symbolism, although cryptic, can perhaps be deciphered by considering the artist's earlier work, The Night, painted in 1918-19. Although not as markedly violent as the earlier composition, Meeting in the Night alludes to similar themes of alienation, injustice and inequality. Writing about the significance of violence and the night in Beckmann's work, Carla Schulz-Hoffmann has proposed: "This is not a parable about a possible redemption, but about human contingency and the lack of freedom in which the night is a symbol of the hell of humanity. There is no escape from this closed system, and neither perpetrators nor victims are really guilty." (ibid., p. 25).
Meeting in the Night is one of Beckmann's most successful works on paper of this period. With a fluid use of line and shadow, the artist has created a composition that relates directly to the pictorial intentions of his oils of this period. Like many other paintings and drawings of this era, Beckmann pays particular attention to the delineation of the figures' hands and the individualization of the shackled woman's face. Furthermore, the figures in this drawing are compacted into a tight, shallow space, giving little regard to perspective and forcing the viewer to concentrate on the powerful image. The effect of this condensed flatness lends a certain monumentality to the figural group and invests the limited gestures with a penetrating significance.