About

Despite the dwindling of first-rate modernist works in the marketplace, this year’s Recent Acquisitions exhibition demonstrates that such rarities are still obtainable. Indeed, two of the masterworks in the current exhibition have not been offered for sale since the early years of the twentieth century. Max Beckmann’s monumental Portrait of Irma Simon comes to us directly from the sitter’s family. Simon, a close friend of the artist, introduced him to his second wife, Mathilde (Quappi) Kaulbach. Irma and her husband Heinrich Simon, editor and publisher of the Frankfurter Zeitung, hosted a …