When the German artist Max Beckmann first began painting he was a talented albeit unrevolutionary Impressionist. His life quickly changed with the First World War. Working as a volunteer medic in East Prussia and then Belgium, Beckmann eventually suffered a severe nervous breakdown and was ultimately discharged. While recuperating in Frankfurt, the artist’s world view darkened as did his painting style, which led to his triumphant success in the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement—or as he preferred to call it, “transcendent objectivity.” In an exhibition of over 100 works, the Neue Galerie explores this formative period in Beckmann’s life and the evolution of his angular, haunted, and almost violent postwar attitude. —Lucy Horowitz