Eden

Signature: Max Beckmann from 1947-48 reflecting on the events of 1918-19 Almost 100 years after the murder of Rosa Luxemburg, Wolfgang Beltracchi addresses the topic using the artistic voice of Max Beckmann from the 1940s. The work “Eden” portrays the torture of the German Communist Party leader as sexualized and – as was typical of Beckmann’s later works – full of symbolism. Max Beckmann was obsessed with painting. He wanted to use it to capture “the mystery of being”. “I would crawl through all the sewers in the world in order to paint”, he wrote to his wife in 1915. With his own “dreadful, vital sensuousness” he penetrated the visible world and, by artistic means, revealed the truths lying behind it.