Till May 26 you can visit the Max Beckmann exhibition in the Caixa Forum in Barcelona. It is quite a disturbing, dark show.

Beckmann is not as famous as Matisse or Picasso and that is good. The exhibition is never over crowded and some nice works are to be seen. With a limited budget as the Caixa Forum has, it is still possible to show great works.

When entering, the first two images make clear that Beckmann had a solid training; the classical foundation is there. This self-portrait is of a confident artist.

He finishes his studies in 1904. In 1914 World War I breaks out and he enlists. In 1915 he suffers from a nervous breakdown that seems to have changed his look on life forever.

In 1918 Germany enters the crazy post war years.

The people on his paintings become actors on stages. The canvasses are very densely populated. They look like the facades of Gothic churches. Compare this painting with a detail of the façade of the cathedral of Bourges.

More characteristics remind me of Gothic art; he often paints on narrow stretched canvasses. This makes the movement vertical, like the sculptures in their niches on churches or this painting of Adam and Eve by Granach. The people look quite rigid in their movements.

Is this because he was more focused on giving a message then by just showing the beauty and richness of life? In a sense it looks like art from before the Renaissance.

His figures are cut out like the images in leaded windows.

When we talk of the Middle Ages, we often refer to them as the Dark Ages... Between the World Wars Germans lived in a very dark and extreme environment. 

All too breathes an atmosphere of the German expressionist movies like ‘Das Kabinett von Dr. Caligari’ or the opera ‘Der Dreigroschenoper’. 

The feeling of ‘Unheimlich’ (I love this German word, it represents the feeling of creepy, eerie, terrific so well. It has the contrasting word 'home' in it) is always there. 

When he portrays himself it is with a cigarette in the hand and the champagne bottle is nearby, but there seems little to celebrate. Did he ever laugh?

People are caught on the same canvas; they do not really communicate with each other. His clowns and circus scenes show the dark side, never the joy of life. What does the woman show the magician? The magician breaths fire and rings of smoke through which he sticks his fan. The other women is pinned down by three swords... It is a hostile and cold world. 

Is seeing the world as a sad and cruel Merry-go-round his way of staying alive and sane?

In 1937 he has to flee Germany, his work is regarded ‘Entartet’ by the Nazis. He lives in exile in Amsterdam till 1948. He paints many of his famous triptychs.

After WW II he moves to the United States of America, but his black look on life does not change. Still there are knifes everywhere.

At the bottom of this painting there is a monkey looking at his face in the mirror. It has the shape of a vagina… Never his women and sensual images show relief or happiness.

He has a story to tell, but his works do not fall in the trap of propaganda. His message has a personal touch and at the same time is a universal one. By citing Greek mythological figures, he places all in a timeless space. But what remains is this severe Nordic Gothic touch to all. 

The painting above is his last one. On the left there is the painter and his model: a woman with naked breasts and a knife. Why are there so many naked breasts in his paintings? Is it the desire for shelter? Are many of 'his' women Amazons?

As so often you see a ladder in the middle canvas. So many ladders and windows... Do they stand for the desire to escape to a 'higher, different' place? 

On the right canvas an orchestra is playing. The music must be like the one heard in the video below.

Apart from the stories told in his paintings, what puzzles me is how he survived during wartime. Where did he get his materials? How was his life in Amsterdam? He was a famous German artist, but his work was not appreciated there. He sold only one double portrait to the Stedelijk Museum.

But then again; does one buy art during a war? Which place had art in WW II?

I live in peacetime. When in the early 2000's in the Netherlands subsidies were cut to the total minimum, people reacted by citing Churchill when politicians suggested to cut down the money for the arts during WW II: ‘Then what are we fighting for?’

My experience is that nowadays art is not a big thing… Have we artists drifted away? I see much decadent behavior by the 'elite'... And so much indifference, so little knowledge of culture (even amongst many of my so called colleagues)...

And what about me and 'home' in a place so poisened by tragic, mad seperatism? About once every week the circus comes to plaça Sant Jaume, flags and all... Time to paint clowns?