Max Beckmann (February 12, 1884 - December 27, 1950) was a German painter and lithographer.
Beckmann was born in Leipzig into a farming family, who gave up their farm and moved to Leipzig after his birth. Beckmann drew from a young age, and in 1900 entered the Weimar Academy of Arts.
Beckmann served as a medic in World War I, but was dismissed after he suffered a nervous breakdown. It is generally held that his experiences in the war had a big effect on his art, and were an important factor in pushing his style in a more expressionist direction.
Beckmann taught art in Frankfurt am Main from 1915, but was dismissed from his post by the Nazi Party in 1933. At the beginning of the 30s, he made visits to Paris to paint, and it was around this time that he began to use the triptych format, influenced in part by Hieronymus Bosch. Other influences include the mythical figures from Delacroix and Rubens.
His art was condemned as degenerate art by the Nazis in 1937, and a day after the exhibition of degenerate art opened in Munich, Beckmann moved to Amsterdam. In 1947, assisted by his American patron, the department store magnate Morton May, he was brought to St. Louis, Missouri to teach one year at Washington University, then later to New York City. He died in 1950 of a heart attack while on his way to see an exhibition of his work at the Metropolitan Museum.