Max Beckmann's Hölle der Vögel (Birds' Hell) painting sold at Christie's impressionist and modern art sale for £36 million (€40.8 million) on Tuesday, a new auction record for German expressionism. Depicting monstrous bird-like creatures swooping on naked men, Hölle der Vögel - painted between 1937 and 1938 - is ranked among the most important anti-Nazi statements Beckmann ever made. He then left his native land for Amsterdam, where he lived in self-exile for a decade, before moving to the United States. He died in New York at the age of 66, on his way to the city's Metropolitan Museum of Art where his "Self-Portrait in Blue Jacket" was exhibited. Originally estimated in the region of $38 million, the sale of "Bird's Hell" easily broke the previous world auction record for a Beckmann, set in 2001 at $22.5 million.

Source: The Local June 28, 2017 08:03 UTC