Jennifer Samet reviews Max Beckmann in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on view through February 20, 2017.

Samet writes: “Clearly, what New York gave Beckmann was not superficial subject matter, but inspiration in the form of energy. His painterly style, developed and refined out of four decades of working, became bolder, his figures and forms more monumental, his use of black more prominent, his sense of space – compressed but never flattened – more self-assured.”