Lithograph on Van Gelder Zonen Bütten paper. Paper size: 8.6875 x 5.3125 inches. Excellent condition. Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Notes: From the album, Der Mensch ist kein Haustier, 1937. Published by Éditions Cosmopolites, Paris; printed by Maître-Imprimeur, Desjobert, Paris, 1937. Excerpted from the album (translated from German), XX examples of this album were shot on Japon nacré, printed from I to XX, numbered and signed by the author. The lithographies were drawn on the long arm presses of the Maître-Imprimeur, Atelier Desjobert, Paris, and signed by the artist. In addition, C examples were shot with lithographs on papier Van Gelder; these examples bear the numerals XXI-CXX, and were signed by the author. All rights, in particular of translation, performance and film adaptation, reserved. Copyright 1937 by Éditions Cosmopolites, 92, Rue des Boulets, Paris. Excerpted from the catalogue entry for the example from this edition owned by the Museum of Modern Art, In Stephan Lackner's play Der Mensch ist kein Haustier (Man is not a domestic animal), a violent revolution has unleashed uncontrollable forces in an unnamed land. Felix Faber, logical and heartless, heads the overthrow; his henchman, Peter Giel, betrays him out of love for Duchess Louise. The story follows these three main characters, whose lives remain intertwined as they make their way through the new world. In 1936 Lackner, then living in exile in Paris, commissioned Beckmann to illustrate his play. At the time, the playwright described himself as "Beckmann's student in a different medium," and stated that Beckmann's art and vision of the world as a theater were the inspiration for the play's main characters. Beckmann, upon reading the finished draft, marveled at the similarities of their ideas. The artist completed the seven lithographs, his first since 1923, shortly after fleeing Nazi Germany in summer 1937. He visited Lackner in Paris, where he signed the prints—an activity that he said reminded him "of better days"—in September. The book was published later that fall. Beckmann's illustrations, in which he gave Giel his own features, focus on the human responses to the upheaval, showing emotional scenes of love, intoxication, and destruction. MAX BECKMANN (1884-1950) was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement. In the 1920s, he was associated with the New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit), an outgrowth of Expressionism that opposed its introverted emotionalism. Even when dealing with light subject matter like circus performers, Beckmann often had an undercurrent of moodiness or unease in his works. By the 1930s, his work became more explicit in its horrifying imagery and distorted forms with combination of brutal realism and social criticism, coinciding with the rise of nazism in Germany.