In Adam and Eve, Max Beckmann reimagines the biblical narrative through the lens of postwar disillusionment. Painted in 1917 amid the trauma of World War I, the work replaces divine drama with existential estrangement. Emaciated and contorted, the figures stand in a desolate Eden, their expressions hollow, their connection fractured. The serpent merges grotesquely with the tree, its red eye burning with menace. Beckmann’s stark palette and distorted forms strip the myth to its raw core—Adam and Eve becomes not a story of sin, but a meditation on human vulnerability and the collapse of inherited meaning.
Archefact 