Editing Max Beckmann (section)

==Themes==
[[File:Max beckmann holle der vogel 123001).jpg|thumb|''Birds’ Hell'', 1937–1938]]
Unlike several of his avant-garde contemporaries, Beckmann rejected [[Abstract art|non-representational painting]]; instead, he took up and advanced the tradition of figurative painting. He greatly admired not only [[Paul Cézanne|Cézanne]] and [[Van Gogh]], but also [[William Blake|Blake]], [[Rembrandt]], and [[Peter Paul Rubens|Rubens]], as well as Northern European artists of the late [[Middle Ages]] and early [[Renaissance]], such as [[Hieronymus Bosch|Bosch]], [[Pieter Bruegel the Elder|Bruegel]], and [[Matthias Grünewald]]. His style and method of composition are partially rooted in the imagery of medieval stained glass.

Engaging with the genres of portraiture, landscape, still life, and [[history painting]], his diverse body of work created a very personal but authentic version of [[modernism]], one with a healthy deference to traditional forms. Beckmann reinvented the religious [[triptych]] and expanded this [[archetype]] of [[medieval painting]] into an allegory of contemporary humanity.

From his beginnings in the [[fin de siècle]] to the period after [[World War II]], Beckmann reflected an era of radical changes in both art and history in his work. Many of Beckmann's paintings express the agonies of Europe in the first half of the 20th century. Some of his imagery refers to the decadent glamor of the [[Weimar Republic]]'s cabaret culture, but from the 1930s on, his works often contain mythologized references to the brutalities of the Nazis. Beyond these immediate concerns, his subjects and symbols assume a larger meaning, voicing universal themes of terror, redemption, and the mysteries of eternity and fate.<ref>Schulz-Hoffmann and Weiss 1984, pp. 270–272.</ref>

His ''Self-Portrait with Horn'' (1938), painted during his exile in Amsterdam, demonstrates his use of symbols. Musical instruments are featured in many of his paintings; in this case, a horn that the artist holds as if it were a telescope by which he intends to explore the darkness surrounding him. The tight framing of the figure within the boundaries of the canvas emphasize his entrapment. Art historian Cornelia Stabenow terms the painting "the most melancholy, but also the most mystifying, of his self-portraits".<ref>Schulz-Hoffmann and Weiss 1984, p. 272.</ref>