What is important to me in my work is the identity that is hidden behind so-called reality. I search for a bridge from the given present tot the invi… - Max Beckmann

Space and space again, is the infinite deity which surrounds us and in which we are ourselves contained.

And the evening of the big Vanity Fair arrived.. . Perre Rathbone and innumerable people received me in enormous halls. The reporter shot pictures and Mrs. Beckmann [Quappi, his wife] grinned – - o-la-La.. ..The whole story is a monumental caprice of my situation in Germany before the Nazi's.

The world is rather shot to pieces [end of World War II - 1945], but the spectators climb out of their caves and pretend to have again become normal and customary humans who ask each other's pardon instead of eating one another or sucking each other's blood. The entertaining folly of war evaporates, distinguished boredom sits down again on the dignified old overstuffed chairs.. .May I report about myself that I have had a truly grotesque time, brim-full with work, Nazi persecutions, bombs, hunger, and again and again work – in spite of everything [a. o. using his bed sheets as canvas for the new paintings]