All things come to me in black and white like virtue and crime. Yes, black and white are the two elements which concern me. It is my fortune, or misfortune, that I can see neither all in black nor all in white... I cannot help realizing both, for only in the two, only in black and white, can I see God as a unity creating again and again a great and eternally changing terrestrial drama.

In Max Beckmann – On my Painting, Tate Publishing London, 2003, pp. 13-14 - 'On my painting' (1938)