Painting is the amniotic fluid of his dreams and thoughts. The first flow of paint washes strange memories onto the shore of his consciousness. There Max Neumann decides what state these driven primordial beings of his paintings will acquire: whether they will finally make themselves known or remain in the indeterminate; whether they take on solidity in contour and become shapes or remain in the blur as amorphous events. And while these decisions develop in the course of painting, the emerging and growing forms and figures draw threatening sensations upon themselves, charge themselves with anger or break away in ironic distance from all too great personal participation. Max Neumann begins his picture configuration from the experience that already captivated Leonardo da Vinci and later the Romantics, that strange figures and beings can be seen in the stain of a wall as in the drift of the clouds. But with a very alert eye for what is happening around him, Max Neumann then drives the discovered shadowy features of thing and animal and man forward into sensed fears, into vicious stories and terrible history, and drives them towards death. Black is the most important and enigmatic colour in his work. It is also the most vivid and powerful. It is never just a symbol. Black moves his paintings. Black gives life or destroys. For Max Neumann, black is a material that acts. Grey-liquid, velvety-soft, angular-injuring. And suddenly there is a bright dog. A monkey, two-tailed. Elsewhere, an artistic donkey. Monstrous and monstrous things happen all the time. (Text: Georg-W. Költzsch)