Beckmann

PRESS RELEASE

BECKMANN
3 December 2025 to 15 March 2026
Exhibition Hall of the Department of Prints and Drawings
Press Preview: Tuesday, 2 December 2025, 11.00 am

Max Beckmann created his work in a world marked by crises and upheavals, transforming his experiences of this into a visual language that remains fascinating to this day. The most intimate part of his oeuvre are his drawings: like a diary, they document his artistic development, serving as a medium for observation and for creating imagery. The Städel Museum is now putting these works centre stage and presenting some eighty pieces from all phases of his career—from little-known drawings to outstanding major works. They offer a direct and intense insight into the life and work of Max Beckmann (1884–1950), one of the most important artists of the modern era.

The Städel Museum holds one of the most outstanding Beckmann collections in the world and has been dedicated to collecting, researching and communicating his work for more than a century. In 2021, the museum received a remarkable addition to its holdings in the form of important permanent loans from the collection of Karin and Rüdiger Volhard. This, together with the publication of the three-volume catalogue raisonné of Max Beckmann’s black-and-white drawings by Hirmer Verlag—with which Hedda Finke and Stephan von Wiese have closed one of the last major gaps in research on Beckmann’s drawings—is the occasion for this retrospective exhibition.

The exhibition is based on drawings from the Städel Museum’s own collection, complemented by loans from renowned international museums and private collections, including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the British Museum in London, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the Kupferstichkabinett – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig. Selected paintings and prints also provide insights into Beckmann’s working process and the interplay of different media.

Philipp Demandt, Director of the Städel Museum, on the exhibition: “Max Beckmann, the Städel Museum and the city of Frankfurt am Main have been closely linked for over a century. Despite the loss of almost all of the artist’s works in its holdings during the Nazi era, the museum now boasts a Beckmann collection of international standing. With the current exhibition, we are focusing specifically on Beckmann’s drawings for the first time in over forty years. They open up a fascinating cosmos of his work and make his artistic development immediately tangible—not least thanks to the outstanding collaboration with Hedda Finke and Stephan von Wiese, the editors of the three-volume catalogue raisonné of his drawings.”

The curators Regina Freyberger, Head of Prints and Drawings after 1800 at the Städel Museum, Hedda Finke and Stephan von Wiese, authors of the three-volume catalogue raisonné of Beckmann’s drawings, add: “The drawings are a key to Beckmann’s work. Through drawing, he developed his unmistakable visual language, captured what he saw and experienced, shaped his personal worldview and transformed fleeting impressions into multi-layered, meaningful compositions. In the course of his life, he produced more than 1,900 black-and-white drawings in pen, chalk or pencil, not bound in sketchbooks—ranging from quick sketches to autonomous images. The exhibition presents a concentrated and representative selection of these works, which—supplemented by individual colour works, prints and paintings—allow visitors to experience the intensity of Max Beckmann’s drawing.”

Curators: Hedda Finke and Stephan von Wiese (catalogue raisonné of Max Beckmann’s drawings), Regina Freyberger (Head of Prints and Drawings after 1800, Städel Museum)

Sponsored by: Adolf Würth GmbH & Co. KG, Dagmar-Westberg-Stiftung, Städelscher Museums-Verein e. V.
With additional support from: Franz Dieter und Michaela Kaldewei Kulturstiftung, Dr. Ina Petzschke-Lauermann

Media Partners: Frankfurter Rundschau, arte
Cultural Partner: hr2-kultur

You can find the full press release here as a PDF.