Movement, Style, School or Type of Art:
Expressionism
Date and Place of Birth:
February 8, 1876, Dresden
Life:
Paula Modersohn-Becker's life was like a Hollywood film. She was the third child of seven born to the son of a university professor and the daughter of aristocrats. Her father worked for the railroad. In 1888, she moved with her family to Bremen, and in 1892, she took her first art lessons while visiting with an aunt in London.
Following her trip to London, she completed her teacher-training studies while still taking private art lessons (1893 to 1895). In 1896, she joined the Union of Berlin Women Artists.
Training and Early Career
In 1898, her life changed significantly. She moved in with a group of artists who resided in Worpswede, an artists' colony outside of Bremen. Already in residence were Fritz Mackensen (1866-1953), Henrich Vogeler (1872-1942) and Otto Modersohn (1865-1943). The sculptor Clara Westhoff (1875-1954) joined the group in 1899, and the poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), from Prague, came along in 1900. Clara married Rainer on April 29, 1901; Paula married Otto on May 25 that same year. The Rilkes' only child, Ruth, was born in December.
Paula and Clara became close friends. In 1900 they spent the first six months of the year together in Paris. Modersohn-Becker studied art at the Académie Colarossi and anatomy at the École des Beaux-Art. Westhoff studied sculpture with the great master Auguste Rodin (1840-1917). Together, they drank in the Louvre, the public exhibitions (salons) and the galleries. Then they spent that summer together in Berlin.
After a short period of estrangement, Paula and Clara reconciled in 1903, perhaps when Modernsohn-Becker returned to Paris that year in February and March. Paula returned again to Paris in February and March 1905, and studied at the Académie Julian.
Stylistic Metamorphosis
At the beginning of the twentieth century, avant-garde art flourished under the influence of Post-Impressionism. The intense colors and simplified forms developed by Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne, and Vincent van Gogh inspired the original "Beastie" Boys group, labeled "Les Fauves" (Wild Beasts), and they, in turn, inspired Modersohn-Becker.
A comparison of her Young Lady with Straw Hat and Flower (1902) and Self-Portrait with Amber Necklace (1906) can help us see her transition to a brighter, Fauve palette. Her naïve style developed in Worpswede, as she tried to capture the agrarian folkloric appearance of her local subjects. Early on, she had been a realist, like her fellow Worpswede artists. But in Paris, she had become an Expressionist.
Flight for Independence
In February 1906, Modersohn-Becker packed her bags in Worpsweder and stole out of the house, much like Nora Helmer in Ibsen's A Doll's House (1879). Filled with ambition (rather than Nora's shame), Paula wanted to take charge of her life. She wanted to establish her own identity. Her Self-portrait, Age 30, on my Sixth Wedding Day [Fifth Wedding Anniversary], was signed P.B., 1906. She had even decided to return to her maiden name. Here, she looks pregnant, but was not.
This highly unusual nude self-portrait reveals a pregnant belly decades before Demi Moore coyly cradled her own for the cover of Vanity Fair in 1991. It reflects Modersohn-Becker's uninhibited originality, as well as her longing for a child (even though she was a stepmother to Modersohn's daughter Elsbeth, whose mother had died). It may be that Westhoff's motherhood and all the other mothers Modersohn-Becker painted encouraged this yearning.
Diane Radycki writes that the sexual relationship between Modersohn-Becker and her husband was not consummated until five years after their wedding took place - just before Modersohn-Becker took off for Paris. Perhaps her disappointment with this part of her life drove her out the door.
A Brief Return with an Unhappy Ending
During June and the fall 1906, Otto Modersohn came to Paris to plead for his wife's return to Worpswede. They lived together in Paris that winter and then Paula returned to Worpswede in the spring of 1907. By then, she knew that she was pregnant. Paula Modersohn-Becker gave birth to her daughter Matilde on November 2. Eighteen days later, the artist died of an embolism. She had just turned 31 years old.
Rainer Maria Rilke channeled his pain into the poem "Requiem for a Friend," written one year after Modersohn-Becker's death. Several scholars speculate that Rilke was in love with both Modersohn-Becker and Westhoff.
Matilde (Tillie) Modersohn established the Paula Modersohn-Becker Foundation in 1978 and passed away twenty years later. The Paula Modersohn-Becker collection was bought by the city of Bremen and the Federal Republic of Germany in 1988 and placed in the Bernhard Hoetger (1874-1949) Museum (opened in 1927). In May 2005, Jenny Holzer (b. 1950) installed For Paula Modersohn-Becker in the museum.
Important Works:
- Young Lady with Straw Hat and Flower, 1902
- Reclining Mother and Child Nude, 1906 (PMB Museum)
- Self-Portrait, Half Nude with Amber Necklace II, 1906 (PMB Museum)
- Self-Portrait, Age 30, 6th Wedding Day, May 25 1906, 1906 (PMB Museum)
- Portrait of Rainer-Maria Rilke, 1906 (Private Collection)
Date and Place of Death:
November 20, 1907, Worpsweder
Sources
Go to Artist Profiles: Names beginning with "M" or Artist Profiles: Main Index