The Wendelsveg
Max Beckmann, 1928
Image not available: work still under copyright
The painting shows a street in south Frankfurt am Main, the Wendelsweg, which runs alongside the Darmstädter Landstrasse. Its northern stretch lies in a built-up area, while the southern end passes through the city forest. Beckmann had lived nearby on Dielmannstraße before moving away in 1926. Rather than a landscape, his real subject is the street and the house of the Schubert family, whose fortune came from a brewery, and he painted it for Johanna Schubert, a friend. The palette is dominated by white, green and brown, and the expressionist forms are pushed toward an almost cubist distortion. The street rises like a steep white tower through the left third of the canvas and leads the eye down to two pedestrians near the lower edge. Beckmann shrank the brewery to make the villa look grander. The balcony room, hidden from the street, mattered deeply to Johanna, since all eight of her sons were born there, and Beckmann marks it with a bright orange awning. His signature sits at the lower right, reading Beckmann F. 28.
- Painter
- Max Beckmann
- Date
- 1928
- Medium
- oil paint, canvas
- Museum
- Kunsthalle Kiel, Kiel