weimar republicconcept:era modern
Departure
Oil on canvas triptych (1932–1935) by Max Beckmann. The side panels depict scenes of torture, bondage, and brutal violence; the central panel shows a serene royal departure by sea, representing liberation or escape. Beckmann's central political-allegorical work.
Scholarly Significance
Beckmann's Departure triptych is the central German Expressionist response to Nazism — painted as Hitler took power. Anchors political context + critical reception + iconography axes for this tradition.
Notes
- ·Max Beckmann began Departure in Frankfurt in 1932, as the Nazi Party rose to power.
- ·The left panel depicts a man with bound hands on a ladder, a woman and child, and a torturer; the right panel shows a woman bound to a pillar while an executioner's assistant holds a fish-headed figure.
- ·The central panel is calm: a royal or mythic figure with a child is escorted by a woman, departing across a sunlit sea. A masked figure stands in the boat.
- ·Beckmann refused to explain the work's symbolic programme: 'The secret meaning of this work is very simple: if you want the secret, you must pay for it by contemplating the work.'
- ·The triptych format explicitly references German Gothic altarpieces, giving Beckmann's secular-political allegory a devotional weight.
- ·Beckmann left Germany on the day the Entartete Kunst exhibition opened (19 July 1937); the painting was purchased by Stephan Lackner in Amsterdam and donated to MoMA in 1942.