Selbstbildnis mit Katze und Lampe

This large and important portrait is a precursor to the more famous drypoint Selbstbildnis mit steifem Hut (Hofmaier 180) of 1921, where a lamp and a cat feature equally prominently in the foreground. In the present lithograph we see Beckmann's friend Ugi Battenberg half-reclined in the background, his bare feet sticking out on the left behind the seated Beckmann. While Battenberg seems to have dozed off, the artist is wide awake, blowing smoke rings, his eyes haunted and glaring into a void, perhaps still haunted by his memories and trauma of the first World War, which had only ended two years earlier.