Max Beckmann: Dream of Life

This book is the catalogue for an exhibition held at the Zentrum Klee in Bern, Switzerland, in 2006. The idea of the exhibition, as pointed out in the beginning of the book, was to confront Beckmann's art to Klee's (the museum's Klee holdings are the largest in the world).This idea is not present here, since the catalogue is entirely centered on Beckmann, leaving Klee out. It is a good survey of Beckmann's art, divided in several themes (Beckmann and music, Beckmann and the circus, Beckmann and women, Beckmann and nature...)and enables the reader to view some rarely seen aspects of the artist's oeuvre (I, for one, did not know he had painted still lives), as well as some of his celebrated self-portraits. One shortcoming, though: the quality of the illustrations could have been better.