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Happy New Year 1917
Max Beckmann (German, 1884–1950)
1917
- Medium
- drypoint
- Classification
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 29.8 x 37 cm (11 3/4 x 14 9/16 in.); Plate: 24.2 x 29.8 cm (9 1/2 x 11 3/4 in.)
- Culture
- Germany, 20th century
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Prints
- Credit line
- Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
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.
