Mehrfigurige Kompositionsskizze (Figural Composition) [p. 62] 1918 - 1919

Curator: This is "Mehrfigurige Kompositionsskizze," or "Figural Composition," a pencil drawing by Max Beckmann, made between 1918 and 1919. It's like a glimpse into the artist's notebook, a moment of raw creation. Editor: My first impression? Claustrophobia. It’s like being trapped in a tangle of limbs and fractured planes, everything compressed onto this tiny gridded page. Curator: Exactly! The grid itself, the very materiality of that paper, becomes part of the emotional weight. Beckmann's hand, sketching furiously with the graphite, trying to wrestle something onto the page during a period of profound personal upheaval. He'd just come back from serving as a medical orderly in World War I... can you imagine? Editor: And you see that intensity, that urgency in the harshness of the lines, the overlapping forms, the complete lack of refinement. The marks aren't just representational; they're expressive. They seem to carve into the surface of the paper. Did he choose that graph paper deliberately, as a constraint? Curator: It's tempting to see it that way, isn't it? Maybe he felt confined, literally and figuratively, needing those rigid lines as a counterpoint to the chaos churning inside. He’s clearly grappling with representing figures, perhaps society itself, fragmented by trauma. Editor: It speaks to how something mass-produced can be a conduit for profoundly personal expression. That humble grid became a battleground. We often overlook the inherent social meanings locked in basic materials. Here, graph paper serves as scaffolding for processing experiences of war and societal disarray. It is mass consumption turned to artistic statement. Curator: It really invites us to consider where these forms might appear later in Beckmann's completed works. It could be notes about an overall picture or how to stage his play "God". It feels like we've been granted access to something private and raw, which then asks you questions and then goes back to just being there, existing to give a gift to you if you can feel it. Editor: The drawing process revealed becomes part of the finished work here; Beckmann allowed it to breathe and stand for itself. Well, it definitely got me thinking about what we classify as ‘high art’. It shows the value of preliminary creative gestures by an established figure, but on decidedly disposable support, opening many interesting questions for scholars, historians, artists and collectors, alike. Curator: Yes, exactly!