The portfolio "Tag und Traum" ("Day and Dream"), from which our sheet comes, is one of Beckmann's last graphic works. In Dutch exile as of 1937, the New York publisher and art dealer Curt Valentin, whom he knew from his time in Berlin, offered him to make a portfolio of graphic works. Beckmann had all the freedom he needed for the creation and eventually composed a series of his most important themes. A self portrait, scenes from everyday life, religious and mythological subjects and general reflections on human existence seem like a last grand retrospective of his oeuvre from today's perspective. Beckmann added watercolors to just five of the total of ninety series of the portfolio "Tag und Traum" and chose very different colors for the individual sheets. Through its special coloring our sheet - different from the colored copy in possession of the Sprengel Museum - gains a very special expressiveness and an almost pictorial character.