Six months prior to the opening of Neue Galerie New York in November 2001, the museum was extremely fortunate to acquire, in partnership with a private collector,an undisputed masterwork of German Expressionism: Self-Portrait with Horn by Max Beckmann. It immediately became one of the core works in our collection,and has mesmerized visitors ever since.

It is an honor to celebrate this painting and the special place it holds for the Neue Galerie. Jill Lloyd has brought her superb scholarship to bear in tracing the work's history and its importance within the Beckmann oeuvre. As she notes, not since Rembrandt has an artist used self-portraiture with the consummate skill and intensity that Beckmann summons.

Self-Portrait with Horn is one of the greatest, most resonant paintings by the German Expressionist artist Max Beckmann. It was painted in 1938,just after Beckmann fled Nazi Germany to seek refuge .in Amsterdam,and it evokes the tribulations of an entire generation.

This painting is the climax of the sequence of self-portraits that Beckmann created during his first months of exile. His informal,bohemian outfit contrasts starkly with the elegant society garb he often dressed in for his self-portraits. Beckmann shows himself isolated and withdrawn, alone on the island of his soul, as he put it. The artist's sidelong glance suggests that he is sunk in his own dark thoughts. Yet Beckmann vividly highlights his head, hands, and musical horn, focusing our attention on his intellect and spirit. The painting reflects the artist's abiding faith in the dignity of the individual.

In Amsterdam, Beckmann was able to renew his lifelong love for both Rembrandt and Van Gogh. Rembrandt's late self-portraits relate most closely to Beckmann's Self-Portrait with Horn. In these, Rembrandt contemplates the stark fact of his own mortality. Beckmann is striving for something similar, in that his preoccupation with the self is also a reflection on the state of mankind. With Van Gogh, Beckmann shared a sense of the isolation and suffering of the artist. The modernity of both is expressed through the tension of their compositions, and the bold,uncompromising vigor of their color and style.

In Self-Portrait with Horn, Beckmann draws on the profound humanism of Rembrandt and the existential anxiety of Van Gogh, creating an image that reverberates through time.