Matthias Beckmann is a Berlin based draughtsman. He is well known for his reportage drawing series made on the spot about the German Parliament, the hospital Charité, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Kunsthalle Bremen, the art museum S.M.A.K. in Ghent, Vietnamese life in Berlin-Lichtenberg, the work of Calixto Bieito at the Komische Oper Berlin, the Broadcasting Company Berlin-Brandenburg rbb, artists‘ studios in Berlin or the Romanesque churches in Cologne.
Matthias Beckmann was introduced to the Party Arty and Schau Fenster circuit through participating in 2012’s Party Arty Residency that was party of the big nine years retrospective called reKOLLEKT, a group show of 53 artists in Berlin’s art institution Kunstraum Kreuzberg, Bethanien. Matthias Beckmann also curated the drawing exhibition “Schöne Blätter” in Schau Fenster displaying 42 artists’ works from one and a half centuries.
His style is a very reduced one using mostly only outlines and no fill ins for his precise drawings. His work is in the tradition of early journalistic draughtsmen who worked for newspapers before the invention of photography. Quick, sharp, precise. He also works on animated films based on thousands of drawings. As a printmaker his favourite medium is etching because it is so spontaneous. The etchings presented in Arty Shop show his artistic and spiritual heroes Francis of Assisi, Albrecht Dürer, Adolph Menzel, E.T.A. Hoffmann and Jacques Tati. With a subtle sense of humour Matthias Beckmann uses the traditional religious form of the altarpiece with predella to honour his personal heroes. As a youngster Matthias, coming from a Catholic family background, was an altar server. His works can be found in the graphic collections of museums in Berlin, Bonn, Bremen, Darmstadt, Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Ghent, Haarlem, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Wuppertal etc.
For a portfolio of available original art works please send an email to info@schau-fenster.info