Max Beckmann created Self-Portrait with Horn (1938) after he fled Germany when the Nazis rose to power. In an ambiguous gesture, he holds a horn in his hand, positioned between his mouth and his ear. Perhaps he intends to sound it like a shofar, to warn the world about what the Nazis would inflict upon humanity. Or maybe he is listening for a sound, for an indication of what is to come.

In 1938, after hearing a radio program by Adolf Hitler threatening the so-called “degenerate” artists with imprisonment or sterilization, Beckmann and his second wife, Quappi, retreated to Amsterdam. A year earlier, the state-sponsored “Entartete Kunst” (“Degenerate Art”) exhibition opened in Munich, vilifying the works of avant-garde and non-traditional artists as dangerous, perverse and subversive. The exhibition subsequently toured Germany and Austria and was seen by almost three million viewers. Beckmann was one of the most prominent painters targeted by the show’s Nazi organizers. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Film and Video catalogue includes footage shot by Julien Bryan when he visited the infamous “Degenerate Art” exhibition.

Meanwhile, in Amsterdam, Beckmann completed one of the most poignant self-portraits of his career. The smile that figured in his original conception of this painting when begun in 1933 was replaced in the final picture with a more melancholic visage and other visual cues, such as the horn, that underscore his difficult circumstances. Beckmann’s face is bathed in shadows and dark circles rim his wary eyes. A mirror with a bright yellow frame surrounds his head, but its black surface reveals nothing about his surroundings. Dressed in a striped garment, he appears cloaked in a prison uniform, perhaps an indication of how this place of exile felt to him. Beckmann remained in Amsterdam for ten years. He noted his new living situation by painting the letter “A” for Amsterdam at the bottom edge of the canvas, beneath his signature.

In a lecture delivered in London in July 1938 entitled, “On My Painting,” the artist stated: “Art is creative for the sake of realization, not for amusement…It is the quest of our self that drives us along the eternal and never-ending journey we must all make.”

Beckmann never returned to Germany. He died in New York City in 1950 after suffering a heart attack while on his way to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art. However, over the course of his lifetime, Beckmann produced more than eighty self-portraits. They remain largely enigmatic, yet as fascinating as the man himself.

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Purchase the Related Catalogue
To learn more about this work, we recommend Max Beckmann: Self-Portrait with Horn by Jill Lloyd. The book celebrates the masterpiece and its special place in the Neue Galerie’s collection, tracing its history and its importance within the Beckmann oeuvre.