Women's Bath
Medium
drypoint
Dimensions
sheet: 53 × 38 cm · plate: 43.3 × 28.7 cm
Classification
Department
Prints
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Anonymous gift in memory of Paul O. Cartun
Accession Number
1959.293
Rights
Public Domain
Tags
male
About this artwork
This depiction of a crowded women’s bathhouse poses the locale not as a site of erotic encounters, but as a performative circus of urban life. Max Beckmann’s cast of characters share unavoidable physical proximity in a packed, flattened space, where a fully stretched woman dives improbably from above. Beckmann was younger than the founding generation of Expressionists. He came to printmaking after serving in World War I and suffering a nervous breakdown in 1915.