Harris Schrank Fine Prints

MAX BECKMANN (1884-1950)
Selbstbildnis mit steifem Hut (Self-Portrait in Bowler Hat)
drypoint
1921
on BSB laid paper
a very good impression of Hofmaier’s fourth, final state
signed and titled in pencil
from the second, final edition of approximately 50
published by I.B. Neumann, Berlin, circa 1922
Image: 12 3⁄8 x 9 3⁄8 in. (314 x 239 mm.)
Sheet: 20 x 16 in. (527 x 413 mm.)
Provenance
Alan and Marianne Schwartz Collection, Detroit.
Literature:
Hofmaier 180; Gallwitz 153
Exhibited
The Detroit Institute of Arts, Master Prints of 5 Centuries: The Alan and Marianne Schwartz Collection, 1990-91, p. 195, n. 182.

An extract from the speech of Max Beckmann on occasion of the opening of the exhibition
Twentieth Century German Art on 21 July 1938 at the New Burlington Galleries, London:

All these things come to me in black and white like virtue and crime. Yes, black and white are the two elements which concern me. It is my fortune, or misfortune, that I can see neither all in black nor all in white. One vision alone would be much simpler and clearer, but then it would not exist. It is the dream of many to see only the white and truly beautiful, or the black, ugly and destructive. But I cannot help realizing both, for only in the two, only in black and in white, can I see God as a unity creating again and again a great and eternally changing terrestrial drama.