Children Playing
Max Beckmann
On view
Painting
German, 1884—1950
Children Playing
1934
oil on canvas
1971.2
33 3/4 x 46 1/4 inches
German artist Max Beckmann painted Children Playing the year after he was forced by the Nazis to leave a teaching position in Frankfurt, as he was later deemed a “degenerate artist” by the Third Reich. In a lecture the German artist gave in London in 1938, he stated “It is my fortune, or misfortune, that I can see neither all in black nor all in white. One vision alone would be much simpler and clearer, but then it would not exist. It is the dream of many to see only the white and truly beautiful, or the black, ugly destructive. But I cannot help realizing both…”