New York
The long underrated painter gets the show he deserves.
German Expressionist Max Beckmann fled that country in 1937, soon after his work was labeled “degenerate” by the Nazis. He ended up in New York, where he spent the last years of his life until he suffered a fatal heart attack one day in 1950 while walking from his Upper West Side apartment to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Now that museum is celebrating his work with a show of 39 pieces, many created during his time in the city. It’s a stunning assembly, full of metaphor and ideas, emotion and politics—the kind of show where people linger over a work with their hands over their mouths or their eyes filling with tears.
Runs through February 20, metmuseum.org
Max Beckmann, “Beginning,” 1949
