Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907) | German Expressionist | Self, Woman, Motherhood

Paula Modersohn-Becker was a German Expressionist painter.

Born in 1876 in Dresden, Becker grew up in an educated household. She received her first lessons in drawing in 1892 at the St John’s Wood Art School in London, where her parents had sent her for the summer to learn English. Returning to Bremen, where her parents now lived, she began taking art courses at various places in Germany through the 1890s.

By the late 1890s she had joined the established Worpswede art colony in Bremen. However, Becker felt the group was too traditional and moved to Paris in 1899. Here she was exposed to the burgeoning new art movements, and was particularly impressed by Gauguin and the Nabis, and by Cezanne.

She returned to Bremen in 1901, marrying Otto Modersohn and becoming stepmother to his young daughter. For the next few years she would regularly return to Paris, sometimes with, sometimes without her family, studying for a time at the Académie Julian. She appears to have been torn between a completely focused pursuit of her career as an artist, and becoming a mother.

1906-1907 were Modersohn-Becker’s most productive years, producing numerous self portraits, many of them nude, focusing on herself and on her progress towards motherhood. In 1907 she returned to Bremen and gave birth to her daughter. She died a few days later from complications, thought to be deep vein thrombosis, at the age of 31.


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