Johanna Beckmann was a German painter and writer.

The family moved to Stargard am Mecklenburg, where Johanna Beckmann spent her childhood and youth. In April 1886, she began vocational training in Berlin. She attended three renowned training establishments: the Berlin Museum of Decorative Arts, the Royal School of Art and the Association Lette School of Drawing. After a short period as a drawing teacher, she began working as a draughtswoman and “silhouette painter” at the Royal Porcelain Manufactory in Berlin in November 1891. She spent twenty arduous and successful professional years. Today, her Art Nouveau decoration gives her porcelain a high collector's value.

After initial work in a variety of techniques (plant drawings as book illustrations, wallpaper decorations, tiles...), she concentrated on paper-cutting in her later artistic development. She exhibited her first silhouettes in 1895-1896 at the Eduard-Schulte art fair in Berlin. Johanna Beckmann worked as an illustrator and silhouette artist for children's and entertainment magazines such as Westermanns Monatshefte, Über Land und Meer and others. During her most creative years, the versatile artist enjoyed great popularity. In 1913, she was awarded the Rome Scholarship.

From 1905 onwards, Johanna Beckmann published some thirty books in which she illustrated her own texts with silhouettes, as well as texts by Goethe, Eichendorff, Storm...

The First World War interrupted her artistic development, despite some patriotic posters. In the 1920s, she could only partially build on her pre-war successes. The last years of her life were plagued by material hardship. She is buried in Burg Stargard.