Max Beckmann's philosophical approach, disturbing subject-matter and spiritual concerns make him a unique figure in art history, as well as one of the greatest figurative painters of the twentieth century. Achieving early success with compositions executed in an impressionist style, the experience of serving in the First World War profoundly changed both his outlook and his art. The moral purpose of the artist was, Beckmann believed, to portray the spiritual condition of his age, he therefore avoided specific instances of evil and the horrors of war, favouring an allegorical and thematic approach. By the 1920s he was established as the leading German artist of his generation, but was forced into exile in the 1930s by the rise of Nazism.