Max Beckmann

Rugby Players (Rugbyspieler) – Musée National d'Art Moderne exhibition poster, 1968
Offset lithograph poster
23 x 15 in
SKU: 177d
$1,960
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This rare poster was produced for the 1968 exhibition of the work of lauded German Expressionist Max Beckmann at the Musee National d'Art Moderne, Paris. The poster features the 1929 painting "Rugby Players (Rugbyspieler)," an image which ran counter to many of Beckmann's other paintings during the period. The turmoil of his life during the period between the first and second World Wars and the rise of the Wiemar Republic resulted in a disturbing body of work strongly defined within spaces confined by harsh lines of contour. Here, however, Beckmann chooses the more jovial and affirming subject of sport. The painting was acquired by the art museum in Dresden in 1930 and, when writing about the acquisition, Beckmann wrote:

"Most important to me was that you recognized by struggle for the affirmation of life – despite everything. That is something extraordinarily rare in our age of pessimistic sentimentality and was for em a real pleasure. though one thinks that so much sympathetic pleasure or pleasure in sympathetic pleasure is chilled." (Beckmann to Otto Fischer, 9 November 1930, in Briefe, vol. 2, 180.)

23 x 15 inches, poster
31.5 x 25.5 inches, frame

Signed 'Kunert' in the print, center right
Framed to conservation standards using archival materials including 100 percent rag matting, UV Clear glass to inhibit fading, and housed in a gold finish wood moulding.

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