The individual representation of the object, treated sympathetically or anti-pathetically, is highly necessary and is an enrichment to the world in form. The elimination of the human relationship causes the vacuum which makes all of us suffer in various degrees – an individual alteration of the details of the object represented is necessary in order to display on the canvas the whole physicals reality.

In: Max Beckmann – On my Painting, Tate Publishing London, 2003, pp. 17-18 - 'On my painting' (1938)