Space, and space again, is the infinite deity which surrounds us and in which we are ourselves contained.
Max BeckmannWhen spiritual, metaphysical, material, or immaterial events come into my life, I can only fix them by way of painting.
Max BeckmannHeight, 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.
Max BeckmannI hardly need to abstract things, for each object is unreal enough already, so unreal that I can only make it real by means of painting.
Max BeckmannIt was so wonderful outside that even the wild senselessness of this enormous death, whose music I hear again and again, could not disturb me from my great enjoyment!
Max BeckmannI 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.
Max BeckmannArt is creative for the sake of realization, not for amusement... for transfiguration, not for the sake of play.
Max BeckmannWhat are you? What am I? Those are the questions that constantly persecute and torment me and perhaps also play some part in my art.
Max BeckmannWhat I want to show in my work is the idea which hides itself behind so-called reality.
Max BeckmannWe will enjoy ourselves with the forms that are given us: a human face, a hand, the breast of a woman or the body of a man, a glad or sorrowful expression, the infinite seas, the wild rocks, the melancholy language of the black trees in the snow, the wild strength of spring flowers and the heavy lethargy of a hot summer day when Pan, our old friend, sleeps and the ghosts of midday whisper. This alone is enough to make us forget the grief of the world, or to give it form.
Max BeckmannAll important things in art have always originated from the deepest feeling about the mystery of Being.
Max BeckmannI went across the fields to avoid the straight highways, along the firing lines where people were shooting at a small wooded hill, which is now covered with wooden crosses and lines of graves instead of spring flowers.
Max BeckmannMy heart beats more for a raw, average vulgar art, which doesn't live between sleepy fairy-tale moods and poetry but rather concedes a direct entrance to the fearful, commonplace, splendid and the average grotesque banality in life.
Max BeckmannI am seeking for the bridge which leans from the visible to the invisible through reality.
Max BeckmannMy figures come and go, suggested by fortune or misfortune. I try to fix them divested of their apparent accidental quality.
Max BeckmannWhat matters is real love for things of the world outside us and for the deep secrets within us.
Max BeckmannThe stronger and more intense my desire becomes to capture and record that which is unsayable, the more tightly my mouth stays shut.
Max BeckmannPainting is a very difficult thing. It absorbs the whole man, body and soul, thus have I passed blindly many things which belong to real and political life.
Max BeckmannIn principle, any abstraction of the object is allowed which has a sufficiently strong creative power behind it.
Max Beckmann