Zoenend paar op een bed 1918 - 1919

This small-scale etching by Max Beckmann is like a raw and intimate stage set. Imagine Beckmann hunched over the plate, scraping and biting into the metal, pulling the image up from some deep, dark corner of his mind. It’s all in the scratchy lines, the way they claw at the surface, creating a world that feels both claustrophobic and exposed. You get the sense of a couple entwined, but the mood is far from tender. Is it love, or something else entirely? Maybe even a power dynamic, caught in the shadowy space between the sheets. Beckmann doesn’t give us easy answers. He's part of a longer conversation among artists who dare to look at the messy, uncomfortable truths about what it means to be human. Like a lot of painting, it’s about the ongoing struggle to make sense of it all, one line at a time.