Hot Springs at Abano
1939
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 50.2 x 80.7 cm (19 3/4 x 31 3/4 in.)
Classification
Painting
Department
CMC
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Collection of Arnold and Joan Saltzman
Accession Number
2020.112.1
Art Historical Context
Max Beckmann's *Hot at Abano* (1939), an oil on canvas measuring 50.2 x 80.7 cm, invites visitors into a dreamlike scene of thermal baths in the Italian town of Abano Terme, renowned for its healing waters since Roman times. Painted during Beckmann's self-imposed exile in Amsterdam—after the Nazis labeled his work "degenerate" and dismissed him from teaching in 1933—this piece reflects the artist's turbulent era on the brink of World War II. Now in the National Gallery of Art's collection gifted by Arnold and Joan Saltzman, it exemplifies Beckmann's shift toward introspective, symbolic landsca...
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...