Before the war (the First World War, I mean; with so many wars one can lose count), Max Beckmann was painting clean, traditionalist self-portraits and lush pictures of bathers by the sea. Otto Dix, Beckmann’s fellow ironist, enlisted at once and served in the artillery corps. “I have been drawing,” Beckmann wrote to his wife one evening, after a day caring for men who’d survived the trenches. Though he never served at the front, Beckmann had a nervous breakdown by the end of 1915. A revolution would come to Germany, as it had already come to Beckmann’s easel.

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Persons: Max Beckmann, Matisse, Picasso, Ypres, Otto Dix, Beckmann’s, Franz Marc, Beckmann, Umberto Boccioni, Wilfred Owen, “, ” Beckmann, who’d, ” Organizations: Imperial German Army, Allies Locations: Flanders, Belgian, Verdun, Frankfurt, Germany