44+ Max Beckmann Quotes On Art, Nature And Photography

Max Beckmann was a German Expressionist painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer. He is known for his self-portraits and his works which often explored themes of alienation and despair. His work was heavily influenced by the events of World War I and the Weimar Republic. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Max Beckmann on art, life, nature.

Top 10 Max Beckmann Quotes

1. I am seeking for the bridge which leans from the visible to the invisible through reality.
2. Art is creative for the sake of realization, not for amusement... for transfiguration, not for the sake of play.
3. There is nothing I hate more than sentimentality.
4. My figures come and go, suggested by fortune or misfortune. I try to fix them divested of their apparent accidental quality.
5. Space, and space again, is the infinite deity which surrounds us and in which we are ourselves contained.
6. Height, width, and depth are the three phenomena which I must transfer into one plane to form the abstract surface of the picture, and thus to protect myself from the infinity of space.
7. I believe the reason I love painting so much is that it forces one to be objective.
8. The stronger and more intense my desire becomes to capture and record that which is unsayable, the more tightly my mouth stays shut.
9. I hardly need to abstract things, for each object is unreal enough already, so unreal that I can only make it real by means of painting.
10. Painting is a very difficult thing. It absorbs the whole man, body and soul, thus have I passed blindly many things which belong to real and political life.

Max Beckmann Short Quotes

• I do not weep: I loathe tears, for they are a sign of slavery.
• One of my problems is to find the self.
• If you wish to get hold of the invisible you must penetrate as deeply as possible into the visible.
• The greatest mystery of all is reality.
• What I want to show in my work is the idea which hides itself behind so-called reality.
• Painting constantly appeared to me as the one and only possible achievement.

Max Beckmann Quotes About Art

My heart beats more for a raw, average vulgar art, which doesn't live between sleepy fairy-tale moods and poetry but rather concedes a direct entrance to the fearful, commonplace, splendid and the average grotesque banality in life. — Max Beckmann

What are you? What am I? Those are the questions that constantly persecute and torment me and perhaps also play some part in my art. — Max Beckmann

The laws of art are eternal and don't change at all, as the moral laws don't change in human beings. — Max Beckmann

All important things in art have always originated from the deepest feeling about the mystery of Being. — Max Beckmann

Max Beckmann Quotes About Life

I am working here (in Amsterdam) on my last big triptych, which will be a tremendous story, and which gives me a more intense life and exhilaration. My God, life is worth living! — Max Beckmann

I passed blindly many things which belong to real and political life. — Max Beckmann

When spiritual, metaphysical, material, or immaterial events come into my life, I can only fix them by way of painting. — Max Beckmann

Max Beckmann Quotes About Love

The important thing is first of all to have a real love for the visible world that lies outside ourselves as well as to know the deep secret of what goes on within ourselves. — Max Beckmann

I believe that the reason why I love painting so much is that it forces one to be objective. There is nothing I hate more than sentimentality. — Max Beckmann

Love in an animal sense is an illness, but a necessity which one has to overcome. — Max Beckmann

What matters is real love for things of the world outside us and for the deep secrets within us. — Max Beckmann

Max Beckmann Famous Quotes And Sayings

What is important to me in my work is the identity that is hidden behind so-called reality. I search for a bridge from the given present tot the invisible, rather as a famous cabalist once said, 'If you wish to grasp the invisible, penetrate as deeply as possible into the visible'. — Max Beckmann

What I want to show in my work is the idea which hides itself behind so-called reality. I am seeking for the bridge which leans from the visible to the invisible through reality. It may sound paradoxical, but it is in fact reality which forms the mystery of our existence. — Max Beckmann

As a painter, cursed or blessed with a terrible and vital sensuousness, I must look for wisdom with my eyes. I repeat, with my eyes, for nothing could be more ridiculous or irrelevant than a 'philosophical conception painted purely intellectually without the terrible fury of the senses grasping each visible form of beauty and ugliness. — Max Beckmann

It was so wonderful outside that even the wild senselessness of this enormous death, whose music I hear again and again, could not disturb me from my great enjoyment! — Max Beckmann

It is, of course, a luxury to create art and, on top of this, to insist on expressing one's own artistic opinion. Nothing is more luxurious than this. It is a game and a good game, at least for me; one of the few games which make life, difficult and depressing as it is sometimes, a little more interesting. — Max Beckmann

I think only of objects: of a leg or an arm, of the wonderful sense of foreshortening, breaking through the plane, of the division of space, of the combination of straight lines in relation to curved ones. — Max Beckmann

I went across the fields to avoid the straight highways, along the firing lines where people were shooting at a small wooded hill, which is now covered with wooden crosses and lines of graves instead of spring flowers. — Max Beckmann

I have never, God or whatever knows, prostrated myself to be famous, but I would meander through all the sewers of the world, through all degradations and humiliations, in order to paint. I have to do this. Until the last drop every vision that exists in my being must be purged; then it will be a pleasure for me to be rid of this damned torture — Max Beckmann

Politics is a subordinate matter; its form of appearance constantly changes depending on the needs of the masses, the same way cocottes adjust to the needs of men by transforming and masking themselves. Because of that it is not fundamental. That is about what endures, what is unique, what is in the stream of illusions - what is eliminated from the workings of the shadows. — Max Beckmann

The individual representation of the object, treated sympathetically or antipathetically, is highly necessary and is an enrichment to the world in form. The elimination of the human relationship causes the vacuum which makes all of us suffer in various degrees - an individual alteration of the details of the object represented is necessary in order to display on the canvas the whole physicals reality. — Max Beckmann

Learn by heart the forms to be found in nature, so that you can use them like the notes in a musical composition. That is what these forms are for. Nature is a marvelous chaos, and it is our job and our duty to bring order into that chaos and - to perfect it. — Max Beckmann

On my left the shooting had the sharp explosion of the infantry artillery, on my right could be heard the sporadic cannon shots thundering from the front, and up above the sky was clear and the sun bright. — Max Beckmann

One thing is sure - we have to transform the three-dimensional world of objects into the two-dimensional world of the canvas.. ..To transform three into two dimensions is for me an experience full of magic in which I glimpse for a moment that fourth dimension which my whole being is seeking. — Max Beckmann

In principle, any abstraction of the object is allowed which has a sufficiently strong creative power behind it. — Max Beckmann

One of my problems is to find the Ego, which has only one form and is immortal - to find it in animals and men, in the heaven and in the hell which together form the world in which we live. — Max Beckmann

Often, very often, I am alone. My studio in Amsterdam, (Beckmann lived in the center of Amsterdam during World War 2.) an enormous old tobacco storeroom is again filled in my imagination with figures from the old days and from the new, like an ocean moved by storm and sun and always present in my thoughts. Then shapes become beings and seem comprehensible to me in the great void and uncertainty of the space which I call god. — Max Beckmann

The metaphysics of substance. The strange feeling which comes over us when we sense: this is skin - this is bone - all in a single vision that is completely unearthly. The dreaminess of our existence mixed at the same time with the indescribably sweet illusion of reality. — Max Beckmann

Life Lessons by Max Beckmann

1. Max Beckmann's work emphasizes the importance of expressing emotion through art, showing how it can be used as a form of personal expression.
2. His use of bold colors and distorted figures also demonstrates how art can be used to convey a message and evoke emotion.
3. Finally, his work serves as a reminder that art can be used to both reflect and challenge the social and political issues of the time.