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Auferstehung (Resurrection) (from 'Gesichter (Faces)' portfolio) 1918

Artwork Auferstehung (Resurrection) (from 'Gesichter (Faces)' portfolio) this artwork made of Drypoint on paper, created in 1918-01-01
Accession No.
2023.156
Date Created
1918
Gallery location
On display in QAG Gallery 9
Department
International Art
Dimensions A
37.3 x 44.6cm
Media Category
Print
Medium
Drypoint on paper
Credit Line
Gift of Timothy North and Denise Cuthbert through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation 2023. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program

Crowded and claustrophobic, this distorted, desolate landscape writhes with contorted figures who climb, twisting and straining, from the pits of hell. Rather than offering a triumphant vision of redemption, Beckmann’s resurrection is fraught and ambiguous; a convulsive, bodily struggle destined to continue beyond the war’s end. 

In Auferstehung (Resurrection), Max Beckmann confronts themes of death, renewal, and spiritual reckoning in the immediate aftermath of World War One. Created as a drypoint, the work reflects the artist’s deep psychological engagement with human suffering and moral crisis, ensuing from the nervous breakdown he suffered in 1915 after serving in the medical corps on the Western Front. 

The artist weaves his own story into the scene by including portraits of his friends Ugi and Fridel Battenberg, his wife, Minna, and son, Peter. Towards the bottom of the image, his own self-portrait faces the viewer, half obscured by his wife’s profile. 
 

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Exhibitions featuring this object

Max Beckmann / Germany 1884–1950 / Auferstehung (Resurrection) (from 'Gesichter (Faces)' portfolio) (detail) 1918 / Drypoint on paper / Gift of Timothy North and Denise Cuthbert through the QAGOMA Foundation 2023. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program

Towards a Collapsing World

Feb 2026 - Feb 2027

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