Prosit Neujahr (Happy New Year)

Plate 17 from the portfolio of 19 drypoints and etchings, 'Gesichter [Faces]', published by Marees Gesellschaft, R. Piper & Co, Munich, 1919.

The image is a mocking view of a celebration among old comrades at a military hospital consisting five men and two women. An elderly woman and a man with an eye-patch sit at a table. Beckmann describes the macabre and tense atmosphere in Germany towards the end of the first world war. Fear and apprehension override the forced jollity of the New Year's celebration.

The nineteen plates which comprise 'Gesichter [Faces]' were created over a five year period. In this portfolio Beckmann used facial expressions to communicate social and moral situations. He initially wanted to call the series Weltheatre [Theatre of the world]. It is autobiographical, with references to himself and his friends throughout.

Max Beckmann was a German painter and printmaker. He studied at the Weimar Academy. He was a member of the Berlin Secession movement and was one of the leading German expressionists. During the First World War he volunteered for the medical corps of the German Army, and served as a medical orderly on the Russian Front and in Flanders. In his spare time he drew sketches at the front, which he later used for his etchings and woodcuts. He suffered a nervous collapse in the Summer of 1915 and was invalided out of the army. From 1925 he taught at the Frankfurt Art School, but was dismissed when the National Socialists came to power in 1933. Political persecution drove him to Amsterdam in 1937, and he emigrated to America in 1947, where he taught in art schools.