Max Beckmann fled to the Netherlands during World War II, before coming to the US in 1947. This work, along with several others by artists whose work was denounced by the Nazis, was acquired by the Museum and exhibited in New [Acquisitions: Free German Art](https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/3042) in 1942. Beckmann always refused to ascribe a specific meaning to this painting, but it has come to be understood as one of the emblematic responses to Nazism.