After graduating from the Weimar Academy in 1903, Beckmann spent a few months in Paris and then settled in Berlin. He exhibited at the Berlin Secession and his earliest printmaking was in lithography, but in 1912 he took up drypoint, which ushered in his ‘expressionist’ style. Mink, front face, her hair pile high anticipates his intense Post-War portraits and is a portrait of his first wife, Minna Tube, whom he called ‘Mink’. They married in 1906, having met as art students in Weimar in 1902. On marriage she pursued a career in singing, and became particularly known for her Wagnerian roles. She appears in thirteen of Beckman’s prints, and in about twenty paintings. They would divorce in 1925.