Boulder, Colorado
1949
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
pen and black ink over graphite on green paper
Dimensions
overall: 60 x 45.2 cm (23 5/8 x 17 13/16 in.)
Classification
Drawing
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Mrs. Max Beckmann
Accession Number
1984.64.1
Art Historical Context
Max Beckmann created this drawing in 1949 during his time in the United States after leaving Europe. Titled simply “Boulder, Colorado,” the work records the artist’s encounter with the American West in the years following World War II. Beckmann, long associated with German Expressionism, used bold, economical lines to distill landscape and architecture into expressive forms that still carry the psychological weight found in his earlier paintings. The medium—pen and black ink over graphite on green paper—gives the sheet a distinctive tonal richness. The colored ground softens the stark contras...
About the Artist
Max Beckmann
Max Carl Friedrich Beckmann (1884-1950) stands as one of the most significant German painters of the twentieth century, a complex artist who bridged Expressionism and the New Objectivity while forging a deeply personal visual language. Born in Leipzig into a middle-class family, Beckmann's artistic journey spanned from academic classicism through the traumatic crucible of World War I to a mature s...