After completing his studies in 1903, Beckmann made the first of many trips to Paris, the capital of the art world. Although his dream was to live there, the political upheaval caused by two world wars, however, would prevent him from ever realizing his goal of permanently settling and pursuing his art in Paris.

By 1906, Beckmann had become an accomplished German painter. He moved to Berlin and participated in exhibitions with the Berlin Secession, the predominant voice of Modern German painting at the time. By 1910 he was held in such high regard by his colleagues that he was elected to the executive board of the Secession, becoming the youngest member ever to achieve such a distinction. Preferring art making to policy making, however, he resigned the following year in order to devote himself full-time to painting.

The First World War interrupted his work, however, and after serving as a medical volunteer for a year, he suffered a breakdown and was discharged in 1915 to recuperate. When he began to paint again in 1917, his style changed radically, his colors became more intense, and his figures compressed into torturous settings and angular forms tilting precariously toward the picture plane.

By the mid-1920s, Beckmann had become one of Germany's foremost Modern painters.
In 1925, he was appointed to teach at the Art Institute in Frankfurt, a position he held until 1933. He started exhibiting his work worldwide with an exhibit in New York in 1934 and was honoured in Berlin at the National Gallery where his work was on permanent display. This was short lived however with Hitler’s appointment as chancellor in 1933. The Nazis viewed Modern art as socially and morally corrupt, and they began to purge Germany's cultural institutions of everything they perceived to be weakening the fibre of the country's heritage. Beckmann's work, along with that of many artists held in high regard today, was suddenly labelled 'degenerate.' His work was now unable to be shown and over six hundred of his works were confiscated. Beckmann fled with his wife to live with her sister in Amsterdam, never to return again. It was an abrupt and humiliating transition for an artist who had been hailed only four years earlier as a national treasure. For the next ten years, Beckmann worked largely alone, except for the company of his wife and a few close friends, using a large tobacco storeroom as his studio. The outbreak of war in Europe confined him to Amsterdam, except for occasional trips to Paris or the Dutch countryside.