Beckmann rose to prominence as a member of the group Neue Sachlichkeit. Alongside contemporaries Otto Dix and George Grosz, he eschewed what he saw as the outdated romantic principles of expressionism in favour of objectivity, action and a return to the order destroyed in the wake of the Great War.

Political action and a sense of social urgency are never far from the surface of Beckmann’s artistic output. The 1920s saw Beckmann achieve significant success and receive many notable accolades, including the Honorary Empire Prize for German Art in 1927. The National Gallery in Berlin acquired two of his works, and he was the subject of numerous publications.

However by 1934, the date of the present piece, Germany was firmly under the grip of an increasingly intolerant and powerful Nazi regime. Beckmann’s once flourishing career had come under the scrutiny of the authorities and deemed to have subversive tendencies. In the coming years, Beckmann would become a target for the National Socialists’ antagonistic attacks on modern art and pilloried as a ‘degenerate’ artist. Such political uncertainty led the Beckmanns to curtail their international travel and instead they spent several summers in the early 1930s at the old family home of Beckmann’s wife Mathilde “Quappi” von Kaulbach, in Ohlstadt, Upper Bavaria. The studio there was built by her father, the renowned society portrait painter, Friedrich August von Kaulbach, and it proved both a useful base and source of sanctuary and inspiration for Beckmann.

Grosser Steinbruch in Oberbayern - A Rare Canvas

There are only eleven known canvasses painted by Beckmann in Ohlstadt with a further five completed between Ohlstadt and Berlin. Of these works, two were lost during World War II and four are in museum collections (Wiesbaden, Cologne, Washington D.C., and Munich). Whilst some of these works offer peaceful depictions of the Bavarian landscape, Grosser Steinbruch in Oberbayern is more overtly reflective of the tumultuous political situation. Portentous thunderclouds gather in the sky and the hard jagged lines of the quarry in the foreground force their way abruptly into the landscape.

Barbara Copeland Buenger writes "... that for Beckmann, unlike other painters such as Otto Dix, landscape did not represent a retreat into a non-political imagery. Beckmann’s deteriorating position in Germany during the early 1930s is expressed in landscapes of the period."¹ 

Buenger goes on to explain that "he encoded a personal response to his increasing ostracism in the motifs of the surrounding area. Beckmann was probably aware that his subject, a local quarry, also added a further dimension that might have reflected obliquely on his current feeling of uncertainty: the quarry was the site of a Roman settlement established in 400 AD. Protected by this landscape feature, which acted as a natural fortress, it had been a sanctuary for the inhabitants against the Germanic tribes. Since the mid-1920s the stone near the Moorsberg was steadily quarried for state-sponsored construction projects, and by 1934 the Roman settlement had been completely destroyed."²

Beckmann in America

On 19 July 1937, Beckmann and his wife boarded a train and fled to Amsterdam. They would never return to live in Germany again. After a decade in Holland, the Beckmanns emigrated to the United States. At the invitation of Perry T. Rathbone, director of the Saint Louis Art Museum, Beckmann took a teaching position at Washington University and his first American retrospective was held at the City Art
Museum in Saint Louis in 1948. Thanks in no small part to the enthusiasm and dedication of Richard Feigen, Beckmann’s work was brought to a wider international audience through his unstinting support and inclusion in numerous exhibitions. According to Frances Beatty’s obituary to Feigen published in The Art Newspaper in 2021, he “had bought and sold more Max Beckmanns than anyone in America.”³

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Auction details

Auction: 
Wednesday 2 July 2025, 2pm BST
Dreweatts, Donnington Priory, Newbury, Berkshire RG14 2JE, UK
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Viewing in London (Highlights)
Dreweatts, 16-17 Pall Mall, St James’s, London SW1Y 5LU
Monday 23 - Wednesday 25 June

Viewing in Newbury (Full sale)
Dreweatts, Donnington Priory, Newbury, Berkshire RG14 2JE, UK
Sunday 29 June - Tuesday 1 July 

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Notes:
1 Max Beckmann (exhibition catalogue), New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 2002-03, p. 176.
2 ibid., p. 177.
3 Thirty-seven years with Richard Feigen: the dealer who was a collector first—and sold to feed his habit - undefined accessed 13 May 2025.