North Sea I with Thunderstorm is a striking oil painting by German artist Max Beckmann, painted in Amsterdam in 1937. Beckmann was known for his symbolic and emotive paintings that often featured distorted figures and expressive brushstrokes. He emerged in Berlin in the early 1910s but left Germany in 1937 after many of his works were included in the Degenerate Art exhibition.
During his exile, Beckmann’s art took on a different tone with mythic and parabolic images that were unmoored from a particular time or place. This is evident in North Sea I with Thunderstorm, which depicts a storm at sea through dynamic brushwork and vivid colors.
