Baccarat
Framed: 52 1/2 x 45 x 1 3/4 inches (133.35 x 114.3 x 4.45 cm)
- 129
Stephens College, Columbia, MO, 1948.
Max Beckmann: Recent Work, Buchholz Gallery – Curt Valentin, New York, October 18-November 5, 1949, no. 6.
German Expressionism, The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, MO, July 1-September 2, 1956, no. 22.
Notable Acquisitions from the Friends of Art Collection, The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, MO, December 11-31, 1958, no. 14.
Man: Glory, Jest, and Riddle. A Survey of the Human Form through the Ages, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, November 10, 1964-January 3, 1965, no. 234.
Works by Max Beckmann, Nassau County Museum of Art, Long Island, New York, October 21, 1984-January 13, 1985, no. 10.
Men and women crowd tightly around a casino table in this dark and expressive painting. The game attendant holds a "rake" (used to slide cards over the table) in unsettling proximity to the woman at center. Max Beckmann’s subject—a game of chance played for high stakes—is significant. Germany had recently gambled and lost in World War II (1939–1945).
Beckmann was among the artists Adolf Hitler had declared "degenerate." Forbidden to work, he and his wife fled to Amsterdam and later to the United States. From 1948 until his death in 1950, Beckmann was a member of the art faculty at Washington University in St. Louis.
Acquired from the artist’s estate by Curt Valentin Gallery, New York, stock no. 8488, by 1954 [1];
Purchased from Curt Valentin Gallery by the Friends of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1954;
Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1954.
NOTES:
[1] The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York, Curt Valentin Papers, III.A.4, Artists’ Correspondence: Beckmann, copy in NAMA curatorial files. The painting was held in stock by Curt Valentin by 1950.
Max Beckmann: Recent Work, exh. cat. (Buchholz Gallery – Curt Valentin, New York: 1949), unpaginated, (repro.).
Benno Reifenberg and Wilhelm Hausenstein, Max Beckmann (Munich: R. Piper and Co. Verlag, 1949), 81.
Wolfgang Venzmer, “Traum von Monte Carlo,” Speculum Artis 2 (1962), 24 (repro.).
Man: Glory, Jest, and Riddle. A Survey of the Human Form through the Ages, exh. cat. (San Francisco: M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco Museum of Art, 1965), unpaginated, (repro.).
Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 203, (repro.).
Works by Max Beckmann, exh. cat. (Nassau County Museum of Fine Art, Long Island, NY, 1984), unpaginated, (repro.).
Fritz Erpel, Max Beckmann, Leben im Werk: die Selbstbildnisse (Berlin: Henschelverlag Kunst und Gesellschaft, 1985), 370, 375, (repro.).
Mathilde Q. Beckmann, Max Beckmann: Tagebücher 1940-1950, 2nd ed. (Munich and Zurich: R. Piper GmbH & Co. KG, 1987), 204-208, 235, 248.
Arthur Flowers and Anthony Curtis, The Art of Gambling Through the Ages (Las Vegas: Huntington Press, 2000), 114-115, (repro.).
Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 210.
Max Beckmann Gesellschaft and Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, eds., Max Beckmann: The Sketchbooks, vol. 2 (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2010), 557, 770.
Catherine Futter et al., Bloch Galleries: Highlights from the Collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2016), 137, (repro.).
