Famed German Artist’s Wife Dies

Mathilde (Quappi) Beckmann, model for and wife of famed German modernist Max Beckmann, has died in Jacksonville, Fla., the German magazine Der Spiegel reported.

She was 82, and the cause and date of her death were not announced.

Beckmann, who died in 1950 at the age of 66, called her his “angel” of inspiration and immortalized her in many of his graphic and sometimes grotesque paintings. She had been a promising opera singer in Dresden when they married but abandoned that career to become his second wife. She fled with him to Amsterdam in 1937 after he fell into disfavor with the Nazis, and then moved with him to the United States in 1947.

After his death she wrote what Der Spiegel described as a “tactful memoir,” “My Life With Max Beckmann.”