December 2, 2022 01:18
A self-portrait by Max Beckmann sold for 23.2 million euros on Thursday, a record price for a painting sold at auction in Germany.
The amazing painting was painted by artist Beckmann of himself during World War II after fleeing Nazi Germany.
Berlin auction officials expected the “Self-Painting in Yellow and Rose”, painted in 1943, to fetch between 20 and 30 million euros.
Beckmann, widely regarded as one of the most important modern artists of the last century, painted the painting while in exile in Amsterdam.
After the Nazis called his paintings “degenerate art,” Beckmann and his wife, Matilda, known as “Kwabe,” fled Germany in 1937. Beckmann waited in Amsterdam for years for a US visa, working under unfavorable conditions.
In the painting, Beckmann departed from his usual dark colors and painted himself dressed in yellow. The auction house, which oversaw the sale of the painting, said the image, which shows him gazing away with his eyes and his meditative pose with his half-bald head, makes him look like a Buddhist monk.
Source: Reuters
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