“Often, very often, I am alone. My studio in Amsterdam, (Beckmann lived in the center of Amsterdam during World War 2.) an enormous old tobacco storeroom is again filled in my imagination with figures from the old days and from the new, like an ocean moved by storm and sun and always present in my thoughts. Then shapes become beings and seem comprehensible to me in the great void and uncertainty of the space which I call god.” WorldWarSeemsImaginationSpaceSunFiguresShapesOceanMovedFilledStudiosStormEnormousUncertaintyWar Of The WorldsVoidMy ThoughtsMy ImaginationTobaccoWorld War 2Old DaysAmsterdamFilled In Author:Max Beckmann
“Colour, as the strange and magnificent expression of the inscrutable spectrum of Eternity, is beautiful and important to me as a painter; I use it to enrich the canvas and to probe more deeply into the object. Colour also decided, to a certain extent, my spiritual outlook, but it is subordinated to life, and above all, to the treatment of form. Too much emphasis on colour at the expense of form and space would make a double manifestation of itself on the canvas, and this would verge on craft work.” ImportantUseBeautifulSpiritualFormCertainSpaceToo MuchObjectsStrangeExpressionDecidedEternityPainterCraftsManifestationColourTreatmentExpensesMagnificentCanvasEmphasisOutlookSpectrumVergeInscrutable Author:Max Beckmann
“I think only of objects: of a leg or an arm, of the wonderful sense of foreshortening, breaking through the plane, of the division of space, of the combination of straight lines in relation to curved ones.” ThinkingLinesSpaceWonderfulObjectsArmsRelationLegsCombinationPlanesDivisionAeroplanesStraight Lines Author:Max Beckmann
“Height, width, and depth are the three phenomena which I must transfer into one plane to form the abstract surface of the picture, and thus to protect myself from the infinity of space.” FormThreeSpaceProtectDepthSurfacePlanesHeightAbstractInfinityTransfersWidth Book:Self-Portrait in Words: Collected Writings and Statements, 1903-1950 Source: Self-Portrait in Words: Collected Writings and Statements, 1903-1950
“Space, and space again, is the infinite deity which surrounds us and in which we are ourselves contained.” SpaceInfiniteSurroundDeities Book:Self-Portrait in Words: Collected Writings and Statements, 1903-1950 Source: Self-Portrait in Words: Collected Writings and Statements, 1903-1950
