The artist Max Beckmann liked to travel, but sometimes he had to travel. During W.W. I, Beckmann witnessed horror as a medical orderly; when the war was over his art changed. He stopped looking to the ideals of the Old Masters and began painting distorted figures with peeved faces and large noses. He squeezed actors, heroes, cabaret singers, and thugs into jumbled compositions, action-packed. In Weimar Germany, Beckmann achieved success. Labeled a “cultural Bolshevik” during the Nazi regime, he moved to Amsterdam in 1937 and stayed there for 10 years in self-imposed exile. Beckmann eventually made it to the U.S., where he died in 1950 at age 66. This exhibition includes 70 works on themes of uproot and travel. —Elena Clavarino