Special exhibition: Max Beckmann

Marie Gisèle Madeleine Josephine Van Waterschoot van der Gracht d’Ailly

Gisèle van Waterschoot, publisher
Max Beckmann: Bildnisstudie Gisèle van Waterschoot [Portrait Study of Gisèle van Waterschoot], 1945
Privatbesitz, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Fotoabteilung, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2015
Special exhibition: Max Beckmann

Marie Gisèle Madeleine Josephine Van Waterschoot van der Gracht d’Ailly

Bornon 11 September 1912 in Den Haag, Netherlands
Diedon 28 May 2013 in Amsterdam, Netherlands
ProfessionPainter, Publicist

The painter and publisher Gisèle van Waterschoot and Max Beckmann probably met in 1942 through Wolfgang Frommel. The painter invited her to his studio, an honour granted to few people.

Beckmann also entrusted her with some of his paintings, which she was to give to the dealer Curt Valentin during a trip to New York. She had been invited to talk in America about the life of artists in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation, at the Beckmann exhibition at the Bucholz Gallery Curt Valentin, among other places. In a letter to his dealer, the painter described her as one of his “most faithful  [friends]”. (Letters vol. 3, no. 763)

In Wolfgang Frommel and Gisèle van Waterschoot, Beckmann found worthy counterparts during his difficult time in exile with whom he could talk about art, mythology and philosophical matters among equals. With Gisèle van Waterschoot, the painter also talked about America and his imminent emigration. In his diary he mentioned that she had lived in St. Louis for seven years and could thus tell him something about his future place of residence.

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