Museums on both sides of the Atlantic pride themselves on their Max Beckmann holdings, but a key number of works by the German artist (1884-1950) remain in private hands.
The Weimar-era bon vivant and art-world A-lister, whose career was put on hold during the Nazi era, left behind a good part of his oeuvre in the US, where he spent a few frenetic years just before his death. And now, in a bijou show planned to coincide with this year’s Art Basel, Hauser & Wirth is bringing together works from private American and European collections, including from Beckmann’s own descendants. Around half of the works will be for sale, says the gallery’s Basel director, Carlo Knöll. Prices are set at €1m-€4m.
Comprising several mature oil paintings from the mid 1920s to late 1940s, the show also has an early painting, Large Gray Waves (1905), and an early self-portrait from around 1900, showing the teenaged artist as a Goya-esque ghoul, gazing at a sky filled with soap bubbles.
Seldom seen works include Girl with Yellow Cat (on Gray) (1937), featuring a very un-Beckmann figure, whose angular features set her apart from Beckmann’s wife and perennial muse, the voluptuous Quappi. An early 1930s work, Seashore with Balloon, contains a striking fish motif—a Beckmann favourite. Knöll adds that The Frightened Woman (1947), a distorted and dramatic work on loan from the family, highlights Beckmann’s rivalry with Picasso.
• Max Beckmann, Hauser & Wirth Basel, until 11 July