This is the story of the relationship between two men who never met. As one can imagine, it falls a bit into the detective genre. Thomas Wolfe and Max Beckmann spoke different languages and led very different lives. But after reading Look Homeward, Angel, in the spring of 1947, when he was sixty-two, Beckmann saw himself as thinking like the book's creator. Painter and writer shared, for example, the commitment to an autobiographical art: Beckmann painted more than eighty self-portraits, and most of his works came directly from his life. Both men also saw their work as a means to bridge time and space. In Beckmann's mind, he and Wolfe shared a creative sympathy. Born in 1884, Max Beckmann achieved significant recognition in Germany when in his twenties. With The Sinking of the Titanic (1912, Saint Louis Art Museum) he portrayed contemporary history on a large scale and endeavored to create a great German art, not unlike Wolfe's ambition to write something grand and American. During World War I Beckmann served as a volunteer medical orderly. After the war, his individual style matured, and he came to understand his artistic task as a quest to fathom the self, and develop a personal mythology. The Dream (1921, Saint Louis Art Museum) takes place at the Berlin train station and reveals the important role dreams play for the artist. For the next two decades Beckmann furthered his career, especially in Germany and Paris, teaching and traveling. His reputation as painter and printmaker was established, until the rising power of Hitler brought Beckmann's career in Germany to an abrupt end. Immediately after the inclusion of his works in the Nazi-organized "Degenerate Art Exhibition," (1) he and his wife, Mathilde, called "Quappi," departed for Amsterdam, with hopes of going on to the United States. But visa papers did not arrive, so they were caught in Amsterdam, where he painted for the next decade. After the war, they could travel again, and, in 1947, they visited their favorite holiday destination, the Cote d'Azur. It was on that last journey to Nice that Beckmann read Look Homeward, Angel. Soon after returning to the Netherlands, Beckmann decided that they should move to the United States. Friends secured him a job at Washington University in St. Louis. After two years there, the Beckmanns moved to New York City in 1949, where Max died of heart failure on 27 December 1950.
