Happy New Year 1917
Medium
drypoint
Dimensions
sheet: 29.8 × 37 cm · plate: 24.2 × 29.8 cm
Classification
Department
Prints
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland
Accession Number
1975.53
Tags
male
About this artwork
This closely packed image portrays a mix of people at a holiday party. A skeleton-like war veteran with a patched eye is just one of several inebriated patrons whose celebration of a new year, Beckmann implies, is pure folly. The artist often worked in drypoint, a method of directly scratching a plate to create an image that, when inked, retains a velvety burr around the lines. The technique allowed him to work spontaneously, similar to sketching with a pen on paper.