Before the Masked Ball, 1923

About the Work

The publisher Reinhard Piper of Munich had commissioned Beckmann not only with the painting ‘Before the Masked Ball’ (Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich), but also with the mirrorimage version of the composition in drypoint. On the shallow peep-box-like stage, the artist (wearing a blindfold) is joined by (from left to right) his mother-in-law Ina Tube, his friends Grete Skalla and Dr Erich Stichel, and his first wife Minna and son Peter. In the bourgeois parlour setting they look frozen in their poses, and isolated despite their spatial proximity. Beckmann made frequent reference to this contradictory sensation.