The cramped composition, the figures’ jarringly different scales, and the range of clashing emotions—these unsettling features express the artist’s terrible experience in a mental institution. Max Beckmann, like many artists of his generation, was profoundly affected by World War I. He volunteered for service in the medical corps, but in 1915 he suffered a nervous breakdown due to the horrific misery and death he witnessed. Beckmann translated his intensely disturbing experiences, as well as his empathy for humanity’s suffering, into his art.