Paula Modersohn-Becker

Paula Modersohn-Becker (born the February 8th 1876 with Dresden - died the November 21st 1907 with Worpswede) is a German painter , and one of representing earliest of the movement expressionnist in his country. Originating in Dresden, Paula Becker engaged in studies of Peinture and joined the artists independent brought together in the village of Worpswede, not far from Bremen, who preached a return to the Nature and the simple values of the Paysan nery. She married there the painter Otto Modersohn. The lack of audacity of the painters worpswediens, however, pushed it to open with the external inspirations and to accomplish repeated stays with Paris, near the artistic avant-garde.

The fourteen short years during which Paula Modersohn-Becker exerted her art made it possible him to realize not less than seven hundred and fifty fabrics of painting, thirteen Estampe S and approximately a thousand of Dessin S. Its style, particularly single and original, is the fruit of multiple influences, with the borders of the tradition and modernity. Its painting presents aspects interfering the Impressionnisme Cézanne or Gauguin, the Cubisme of Picasso, the Fauvisme, the Japanese Art or the art of the German Renaissance. The expressive force of its work summarizes with it only the principal aspects of the Art at the beginning of the 20th century. Paula Modersohn-Becker died prematurely in thirty and one years, of the continuations of a childbirth. The artist, until today, remains rather little known beyond the German-speaking countries.

Biography

Family

Paula Becker is the third child come in the world within a phratry which counted in all seven brothers and sisters. His/her father, Carl Woldemar Becker, were Engineer of trade, and his/her Mathilde mother went down from a famous family of the Noblesse of Thuringe, von Bültzingslöwen. The letters that Carl Woldemar Becker sent later to his daughter give of him the indication of a man cultivated and opened on the world: familiar of Paris just like of London, it controlled the Russian , the French and the English. The maternal family of Paula presented the same predispositions to the voyage: the grandfather von Bültzingslöwen had ordered a garrison abroad, and several brothers of Mathilde emigrated in Indonesia, New Zealand and Australia.

The Art, the Literature and the Musique occupied an essential place in the education of the Becker children. Paula, just like her sisters, accepted courses of Piano. The oldest sister of Paula, who had a very beautiful stamp of voice, was entitled even to courses of Chant. The family appreciated much the work of Richard Wagner, except notable for Paula who judged it “ non-German ” ( undeutsch ). As for Goethe, he was regarded in the hearth as largest of all the Poète S. According to the biographers of Paula, Becker belonged to the middle-classes and small the Bourgeoisie, and were thus not particularly easy.

First years

Dresden and Bremen

Paula Becker spent the first twelve years of her life to Dresden, one period about which very few elements are known. One finds nevertheless the trace of a drama which has occurred at the time of the tenth year of Paula, whereas she and her two cousins Cora and Maidli Parizot played in the galleries of a career of Sable. Hidden by a crumbling, only Paula and Maidli could be survivors in time, whereas the young person Cora Parizot, eleven years old, choked and found death under rubble. In a written letter many years later with To groove Maria Rilke, Paula Modersohn-Becker revealed at which point this experiment had marked it. Its biographer, Lieselotte von Renken, see there even the reason of the determination of which the painter made proof to engage in an artistic career.

In 1888, Carl Woldemar Becker obtained a station with Bremen in the sector of the building, which pushed the family to leave the town of Dresden. The cultural life of Bremen was particularly effervescent at that time, and the mother of Paula cultivated many friendships in the artistic circles, so that the family Becker could enjoy constantly privileged relations with this medium.

England and first courses of drawing

To the beginning of the be 1892, Paula Becker was sent by her parents in England in order to carry out a Language course abroad there. A half-sister of its father lived around London, and Paula was to join it some time, to learn how to speak the English and, consequently occasion, to hold a household. Thanks to the support of her uncle, the young girl could also receive artistic courses. After some preliminary studies of Sketch, it started to attend a private school of the Art schools, where it spent six hours per day to be there initiated with the technique of the Dessin. These courses were however well quickly abandoned: the duration of the London stay of Paula had been initially fixed at one year by his/her parents, but the evil of the country, the nostalgia of the hearth and the authoritative discipline that his/her aunt imposed to him pushed Paula to set out again for the Germany hardly six months later.

The school of teachers

It is above all because of the influence of his/her father and the respect which it inspired to him that Paula Becker followed the courses of a school of training of teachers starting from 1893, with Bremen. It followed in that to back-plate the steps of her oldest sister, who had continued the same course. However it could obtain from her father, as a counterpart, the right to attend courses of Peinture.

The courses of painting took place at the painter Bernhard Wiegandt, and constituted in particular for Paula the first occasion to work according to model truths. From this time go back for example a series to portraits of his/her brothers and sisters, like its first self-portrait, carried out towards 1893. This artistic activity did not lead it to neglect its principal studies: in September 1895, Paula Becker passed the examination of teacher and obtained the diploma with good performances.

With the beginning of the year 1893, Paula had in addition been able to admire for the first time the achievements of the artistic circle of Worpswede, when Fritz Mackensen, Otto Modersohn, Fritz Overbeck, Hans amndt Ende and Heinrich Vogeler exposed their fabrics to the Kunsthalle of Bremen. The young woman was certainly charmed, but nothing in its newspaper makes it possible to affirm that it was particularly impressed. She entrusts to it nevertheless much to have appreciated a fabric of her husband-to-be, Otto Modersohn, which resplendissait of Couleur S strange and gave a savor very particular to a landscape of Bruyère S.

Cours de painting in Berlin

Paula, thanks to the maternal branch of her family, could go to Berlin to the beginning of the year 1896 in order to follow there during six weeks of the courses of Dessin and Peinture near the Association of the Berliner Artists ( Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen ). This school of painting was very in sight: hardly eleven years earlier, Käthe Kollwitz for example had made its first weapons there. The existence of this type of associations was a need for the women, who did not have yet access to the academies of the Art schools at the time.

Paula was able to continue her formation beyond the six weeks initially considered, because it seems that his/her mother obtained from the direction a reduction in the education rights. Mathilde Becker, to manage to pay studies with his/her daughter, went even until accommodating a boarder in the family home. In addition, the brother of Mathilde, Wulf von Bültzingslöwen, just like his Cora wife, had declared himself ready to place Paula in their residence and to provide for his daily needs.

The teaching exempted in Berlin granted a dominating place to the drawing, carried out starting from professional models. Only the candidates having already a good control of the matter were allowed in the class. Many a drawings of naked carried out by Paula and going back to this period could be preserved: the lines, in general, are strongly marked, and the effects of Clearly-obscure strike by their omnipresence. In 1897, Paula was allowed for the first time in the class of Jeanne Bauck. This artist, now fallen into the lapse of memory, had a major influence on his young pupil, and persuaded it later to go to live some time with Paris.

During her Berliner stay, Paula Becker Just like spent many hours in the galleries of the Musée S. the artists of the Mouvement nazaréen, which had known its apogee seven decades earlier, Paula liked over all the fabrics of the German Renaissance and Italian. Among the painters which she appreciated particularly, one counts Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach, Hans Holbein Old the, Titien, Botticelli and Léonard de Vinci. Paula thus seems to have had a predilection for the artists tending to draw clear forms and to press on the feature.

Worpswede and Paris

The departure for Worpswede

At the time of the silver wedding of the parents, the Becker family undertook with the be 1897 an excursion at the small village of Worpswede, located at some encablures of Bremen. Paula Becker was deeply impressed by the singularity of the place, the diversity of the Couleur S present in the landscape and especially by the “artistic colony” ( Künstlerkolonie ) which had been founded there a few years earlier. Before even the Fall, it went again on the spot in company of a friend, in order to meet the painters and to visit the places with more attention. When in January 1898, Paula inherited 600 mark S and could refund part of the sums engaged by his/her cousins Arthur and Greta Becker to enable him to continue its studies, it decided in agreement with her parents to go to Worpswede.

In the beginning, the stay was considered like simple holidays of short duration. Mathilde Becker had provided that his/her daughter follows there during only two weeks the courses of Peinture and Dessin of Fritz Mackensen, so that it can then leave for Paris to the autumn and find a place of girl-with-par there. One must in addition with the influence of the father have been able to convince Mackensen to deal with the Paula young person. Despite everything these family precautions, it seems well that Paula Becker, when she took finally the road of Worpswede in September 1898, intended to remain there longer than envisaged and ambitionnait to become a professional artist.

The artistic colony of Worpswede

The artists who had settled with Worpswede in 1889 asserted their independence with respect to the large artistic academies. They were, for the majority, former students of the Académie of the Art schools of Düsseldorf, a returned institution celebrates before a few years by Wilhelm von Schadow. As much of young artists of the 19th century, they considered however the academic Peinture official institutions and their former Masters of a very critical eye. By establishing this retirement symbolic system in Worpswede, they aspired to give a place renewed and regenerated with the Nature in their works, just like had done it before them Theodore Rousseau and his school of Barbizon. The painters of Worpswede wished to exert their art in full nature, without artifice and in all simplicity, so in particular giving a favorable image of the country population, which they judged of a still original and noncorrupted purity by civilization.

A deep friendship was born gradually between Paula Becker and Clara Westhoff, an young woman who wanted to become sculptrice and followed to Mackensen of the courses of drawing and modelling. Although Paula has, at the beginning, adoptee an attitude rather reserved with respect to the artists of Worpswede, of the bonds imperceptibly tied starting from March 1899, in particular with her husband-to-be Otto Modersohn and with Heinrich Vogeler. It is under their benevolent supervision that Paula carried out several Estampe S with strong water during the be 1899. The strict discipline which this so particular graphic work imposed however especially did not rain to him, just as the constraint related to the use of the techniques of Gravure.

The courses exempted by Fritz Mackensen were at the beginning of a great help for Paula Becker and the blooming of its talent. As of the end of 1898, however, the young woman started to have the feeling that this professor was not made for it. Its own style, which tended more and more to the simplification of the forms and the colors, indeed found little echo with Worpswede. In addition, when Paula started to take part in some exposures in 1899, pitiless criticisms whose it was the object completed to convince it that its painting remained marginal in the evolution of the German culture. In the Weser-Zeitung dated from the December 20th 1899, one could read this analysis of two exposed works:

“To qualify this work, the resources of a pure language are not enough, and we refuse to use impure. Let us say that if a creative activity of the same order had been illustrated in the fields of the theater or the music, and had had insolence of venturing on scene or in the concert hall, the whistles and the hootings would early have made put a term at a so coarse masquerade. ”

Admittedly, of the artists like max Slevogt, Lovis Corinth, max Liebermann or Wilhelm Leibl were then their first successes with Munich and Berlin. As a whole, however, Germany was always marked by the domination of the Art galleries and by the omnipresence of the academic art, and it is well rather Paris which shone then by the opening and the innovation of its artistic life. Nothing astonishing thus so that Paula Becker, since her stay in Berlin, wished over all to discover and visit the French capital .

The first artistic stay in Paris

It is in the night of the December 31st 1900 that Paula took the road of the France. Just like Rome had been at the beginning of the 19th century a great center of attraction for all the German artists , Paris had then become the meeting place par excellence of all the artistic current European. Several considered German artists, like Emil Nolde, Bernhard Hoetger or Käthe Kollwitz carried out more or less long stays there. As for Clara Westhoff, the friend of Paula met with Worpswede, it was there already since the end of the year 1899, animated by the hope to become the pupil of Auguste Rodin.

Paula Becker could allow this voyage on the financial plan, since it continued to profit from the assistance of her parents and the remainder of his family. She settled with number 9 of the street Campagne First, in the 14 {{E}} district, and summarily decorated her small studio of cases and some pieces of furniture unearthed with the Flea market. Paula went to follow the courses of the Académie Colarossi in the Latin Quarter of Paris, because the latter offered the advantage of accepting the women, and recovered to survey the Musée S as it had done with Berlin. Only or in company of Clara, she attended moreover the artistic exposures and galleries to familiarize with the modern painting French. Clara Westhoff brought back later certain anecdotes related to this period, such as for example the visit returned to the merchant of art Ambroise Vollard, or the major fascination felt by Paula for the work of Paul Cézanne, then completely unknown. According to the historian of art Christa Murken Altrogge, Paula Becker is the first German artist to have perceived the revolutionary talent of this painter. In a letter dated from the October 21st 1907 addressed to Clara, Paula wrote many years later that Cézanne “ is one of the three or four large Masters who had on me the effect of a storm ”.

No doubt also that Paula Becker, at the time of her stay in Paris, visited the great exposure organized by the movement nabi. This artistic group, deeply influenced by the Print S of the Japanese Art, stressed surfaces and on whimsical Couleur S, of which the goal was not to retranscribe reality accurately but to contain a clean significance.

Since the month of April 1900 was held in addition large the World Fair intended to celebrate the entry in the new century. This event was the occasion to come to Paris for Fritz Overbeck and the Paysagiste Otto Modersohn, which arrived in June. Paula Becker knew already Otto and, to have been able to admire her work with Worpswede, appreciated much this man older than it eleven years. Modersohn was then married in Helene, that its precarious health had retained in Worpswede: she found death during the Parisian short stay of Otto. The tragedy precipitated the return of Modersohn and Overbeck in Germany.

Return to Worpswede

Hardly two weeks after the departure in catastrophe of the two friends, it was with the turn of Paula and Clara to take again the way of Worpswede: since the heritage and the sums conceded by its close relations were exhausted, his/her father indeed suggested to him being temporarily a place of controlling. The bad health condition in which it was then did not allow it however in the immediate future. The young woman had asserted herself on Paris such a work and a lifestyle if Spartan that its doctor prescribed rest to him. At that time, Paula wrote each day in her newspaper, a resource today amply used by her biographers. Its state of tiredness seems to have given him the presentiment of its premature disappearance:

“I know that I will not live very a long time. But is this so sad? Is a festival better because it is longer? My life is a festival, a short and intense festival. (...) And if the love flowers me still a little before flying away, and makes me carry out three good paintings in my life, I will leave readily, of the flowers to the hands and the hair. ”
(July 26th 1900)

Several weeks later, Paula made a correction on this date of her newspaper, by adding the words “And that lasts still a long time. I am strong, full with life and in good health. ” (September 3rd 1900).

While it slowly recovered its stay in Paris, its good friend Otto Modersohn visited him occasionally. Their relation gained in-depth and in intensity: the September 12th 1900, hardly three months after the death of Helene Modersohn, the couple announced its Fiançailles.

To this time also the meeting with the Poète Rainer Maria Rilke goes back. This last had bound of friendship with Heinrich Vogeler at the time of a stay to Florence, in 1898. It is thus as a guest of Vogeler that it achieves a visit with Worpswede, at the time when Carl Hauptmann, the brother of Gerhart Hauptmann, was of passage at Modersohn. The merry assembly met regularly in the Barkenhof residence, where lived Vogeler. Rilke, vis-a-vis Clara Westhoff and Paula Becker, believed one moment to deal with two sisters: in its newspaper, it refers to the two friends by calling respectively them “ the painter blonde ” and “ the painter brown ”. Rilke was very related to the two women: while it tested much evil to see in Clara an artist because of his attraction for her (he married it shortly after), he always regarded the dearest Paula Becker as “ of the friends ”. He dedicated even a Poème to him, published later in his collection Buch der Bilder :

Of the blasses Kind, year jedem Abend ground (You, pale child, owe each evening)

der Sänger dunkel stehn VOR deinen Dingen (To sing in the shade far from your object)

In the monograph which it carries out on the painters of Worpswede, Rilke however does not mention any Paula. In addition, when it was necessary for him to introduce it near Auguste Rodin, it presented it only as the wife of a famous painter. Rilke ends nevertheless up admitting that Paula Modersohn-Becker was a true artist, little before death carries the latter and that the Histoire of art gives to its work a range much larger than with that of her husband.

Marriage with Otto Modersohn

Otto Modersohn and Paula Becker married the May 25th 1901. For this purpose, and under the pressure exerted by her parents, Paula even agreed to follow a course of Cuisine to Berlin, which it gave up however rather quickly. She is explained some in a letter of the March 8th 1901, and the reason which she evokes reveals not only its major personality, but also the frame of mind which will be it his during its first year of married life:

“It is good to be delivered behaviors which take the sky to us. ”

The couple carried out a short honeymoon, during which it was in particular invited by Gerhart Hauptmann close to Hirschberg in Silesia, today a territory Polish. Open then a period of the life of Paula Modersohn-Becker where the latter tried to reconcile its artistic ambitions with its new life of wife, housewife and mother-in-law of small Elsbeth, resulting from the first union of Otto Modersohn. Paula, for any workshop, did not have whereas a small cell located in the court of a farm. Otto undertook to make build a fanlight on the roof of the principal building, so that his wife can work there. The young groom was helped in the achievement of the daily tasks by a servant. From nine hours of the morning at approximately an hour of the afternoon, Paula could thus paint in her workshop, left to lunch then returned to her work around fifteen hours, to often remain there until the evening, when nineteen hours sounded. She tried nevertheless to be an attentive and conscientious mother for her Elsbeth daughter-in-law. The latter was used besides as model with a whole series of portraits of child, such as the Little girl with the garden close to a sphere of glass , which goes back to 1901 or 1902, and the Tête of a little girl .

Otto seems to have been very happy during the first three years of its new life of couple. Its newspaper then indicates regularly to which point it was persuaded to share the existence of an artist out of the commun run, thing that nobody of other seemed yet to realize at the time. Paula had found in Otto Modersohn a loving man and who, well far from setting up in obstacle with the development of his artistic sensitivity, could on the contrary accompany this evolution by a critical and appreciative glance. As much of its contemporaries, however, it missed in Otto a really major comprehension of the work of his wife. In addition, the intensity with which Paula reacted to the least sudden starts of the artistic life Parisian left it somewhat perplexed.

The Mariage had also the merit to deliver Paula of the prospect definitively to exert a trade which she would not have liked in order to ensure her subsistence. Of all her life, the young woman succeeds in selling only two of her fabrics, respectively with her friends Rilke and Vogeler: without its union with Otto, it is thus obvious that she should have been solved to follow the opinion of her father and to take a place of controlling. The situation, however, also had bad sides. While Otto, in its newspaper, affirms that the life of couple proceeded better than he would have believed it, one finds at that of Paula, at the date of Easter 1902, a more critical and tinted attitude derision:

“The experiment taught me that the marriage does not make happier. It removes the illusion, formerly omnipresent in all the space, which there exists a soul mate. The feeling of incomprehension is doubled, because all the life former to the marriage had consisted in finding a space of comprehension. I write this in my book of kitchen, Easter Sunday 1902. I sat in my kitchen and I prepare a roast of veal. ”

Contrary to her husband, who sought the calm one and the loneliness of Worpswede to exert all his art, Paula Modersohn needed a certain variety and contact with the outside world.

Paris, 1903

Paula, to the beginning of the year 1903, agreed a two months escapade to Paris, far from her husband and of her daughter-in-law. She found over there Rainer Maria Rilke and his wife, Clara Westhoff, and felt without evil the growing tension which settled between the two members of the couple.

The young woman passed the majority of her time to the Musée of Louvre, where it made many sketches according to Greek antiquities or Egyptian. In the self-portraits which it carried out thereafter, in particular the Autoportrait with the camellias , the influence of famous the funerary portraits of Fayoum and their faces intensely expressive comes out besides from a manner very striking. Paula recovered to attend some exposures in company of the Rilke couple, which could be also arranged to introduce it near the Sculpteur Auguste Rodin, whose fame had reached its apogee. It finally seems, at this period of its life, that Paula was taken of an increasing passion for the traditional Estampe S of the Japanese Art: all these influences, various and contrasted, were largely to weigh on the evolution and the originality of its style.

The historians of art estimate rather probable that Paula could moreover discover some fabrics of Paul Gauguin at the time, although nothing lets it suppose in its newspaper. The dead natural realized after its return to Worpswede, from their Color S sharp, sliced and isolated the ones from the others, recall indeed certain aspects of the Peinture of Gauguin.

Worpswede (1903-1905)

Satisfied by its voyage, the spirit filled of innumerable artistic influences, Paula Modersohn returned to Worpswede in March 1903 to find her husband and his daughter-in-law there. Its stay in France, actually, had even made him feel in a way more marked than before the emotional tie which linked it with its hearth. Itself often dreamed of a child, and began to consider it regrettable that was refused to him for the moment. Besides among the few 130 fabrics of painting produced until the end of the year 1904, one finds at the sides of the dead natural many Portrait S of infants or young children, that the artist represents from now on without their mothers. The evolution of the style of Paula left her husband in a certain incomprehension. Thus one finds this appreciation in the newspaper of Otto Modersohn, dated from the September 26th 1903:

“fall from now on into through all making coarse, hideous, odd, heavy. Are the colors famous - but the form? But the expression! Hands like spoons, noses like bludgeons, mouths like opened wounds, expressions of cretins… Two heads, four hands on a tiny surface, nothing more for children. And it is difficult to want to advise it, like often. ”
(according to Lieselotte von Reinken, p. 88)

Certain portraits of children show how Paula knew to integrate and develop the techniques of the movement nabi, in particular with the Enfant of peasant on a cushion with red squares of 1904: the squares of Couleur S connected by white bands seek to give to it the effect of a Tapis. Paula voluntarily has vêtu her young model of clothes to the reddish colors, so that a true quadrichromy of Rouge settles with the cushion and confers a certain harmony on the fabric. The care taken here to the details of the face is rather not very usual in Paula Modersohn. In other portraits of children dating from the same period, the artist operates a simplification differently more radical form and colors, and reduces the features of the face to bare essential.

Paris, 1905

As of 1903 and the second stay which it had carried out with Paris, Paula Modersohn-Becker had announced with her family that it could not be prevented from again going back there a day or the other. Otto Modersohn, which deeply regarded as a German painter , took this ceaseless need very badly to travel. The man tended to reject the Modern art French, which however settled more and more in the German galleries and exposures. Paula arrived in spite of very imposing her wish, and under the pretext extremely convenient to go to spend some time with her sister Herma Becker, the young woman could take again the road of Paris the February 14th 1905. She benefitted again from her passage in the French capital to take some courses of Dessin in private academies, but gradually realized of the uselessness of this step: she, with the passing of years, had already developed an entirely free and autonomous personal style. Paula could in addition find and return visit to certain old women knowledge of the movement nabi, of which Maurice Denis.

Otto Modersohn was finally solved to achieve to him also a voyage to Paris in company of the couple Vogeler, although his wife clearly meant to him that she preferred to remain alone during her stay. The friends, like formerly, went to survey the artistic exposures of the avant-garde. Tensions were not long however in being born within the small group. Otto, in particular, could not dissimulate a certain rancour because of intensity with which Paula seemed to appreciate Parisian life and to admire French art. His wife of it was conscious, as its newspaper with the April 21st 1905 proves it:

“It was appeared that I preferred to remain in Paris and that I did not make any case of Worpswede. ”

While the biographers can only suppose that Paula Modersohn-Becker discovered fabrics of Paul Gauguin as of her second visit in Paris, this detail is not on the other hand any doubt for its third stay thanks to some notes taken by her husband on the subject. As of her return to Worpswede, Paula concentrated with passion on the work of this painter, and took care in particular that his/her sister installed in Paris sends all the critical studies to him relating to it.

Last years

Return to Worpswede (be 1905- February 1906)

The third stay with Paris encouraged Paula Modersohn-Becker to more devote to the art of the Still life . Whereas only ten tables of this type are listed before with 1905, the two years which separate it from dead do not count of it less than one around fifty. These works, in a general way, tend to always more reduce the things represented to their primitive forms, which it is of Cercle S, ellipse S or Trapèze S.

This time abounds moreover in new portraits of children, of which the Jeune country-woman sitting on a chair (), which is characterized by the total renunciation of the lines and the marked forms. The Blower of Birkenwald (), as for it, is regarded by the biographer Lieselotte von Renken as most successful of all the attempts of the painter aiming at expressing in a simple symbolic system the union of the child and Nature: a little girl represented of profile there blows in a coloured horn, and walks to great steps in front of a tangle of Arbre S to the colors of the Automne.

The husband of Paula, on his side, was made increasingly critical about the evolution that took the style of its wife. The December 11th 1905, it wrote thus in its newspaper:

“To paint the naked ones in life size, it cannot it, not even as of the heads in life size (...) Its more beautiful studies, it drops them. To make drawings and to learn the technique are enough for him. She adores the color - but with a contrary roughness with painting, in particular for the characters. She venerates the primitive art, and it is well damage - she should especially think of painting. She wants to link the form and the color - without knowing too much how. ”
(according to Günter Busch, p. 427)

Paula Modersohn-Becker nourished the desire in addition to turn over to Paris once again. Clara Westhoff, which had separated temporarily Rainer Maria Rilke, lived with Worpswede since the be 1905: Paula entrusted her project to him, about which she had spoken with nobody besides her mother. She acknowledged with the latter, in a letter, to save money in forecast already. When Rilke arrived at Worpswede in December to celebrate there Christmas with his wife and her child, it was put in its turn in the confidence. For Rilke, it was the occasion to finally consider the work of Paula Modersohn-Becker with serious and attention. In a letter addressed in January 1906 to its guard and patron, August von der Heydt, it wrote:

“The painting worthiest of interest was that of the wife of Modersohn, which developed a very personal art at the same time and very worpswedien, direct and to the point, representing the things as anybody other could not see them and paint them. And this personal route brings it to singular similarities with Van Gogh. ”
(according to Lieselotte von Reinken, p. 109)

Rilke encouraged Paula in her wish to leave Worpswede and, consequently, her husband. In order to support it, it acquired of the fabric of the Nourrisson with the hand of the mother (). A little later, it would advise to him on sale to expose and put some of its tables in the Parisian galleries. Paula, however, who showed her fabrics only with many reserves, chooses not to take this route, because it did not estimate to have a sufficient artistic scale.

Rupture with Otto

Paula Modersohn-Becker left Worpswede the February 23rd 1906. She clearly indicates in her newspaper that this gesture is equivalent to a rupture with Otto. This last was taken with deprived besides, and sent to Paris letters entreating it to return near him. Paula requested it in return to be accustomed with the idea that it would continue from now on her own way in the life. Her husband went until making a one week jump in Paris in June, but the dialog between the two members of the couple remained unfruitful. Otto Modersohn continued despite everything to maintain it financially and to receive the moral support of the own family of Paula, who reproached the latter her selfishness.

The young woman particularly settled in a workshop Spartan of the avenue of Maine, in the 14 {{E}} district. She recovered to attend the courses of Dessin, the exposures of the avant-garde and even went to attend a course of Anatomie of the École of the Art schools, since its style left it dissatisfied. Very intrigued by a Sculpture exposed to the Living room of Independent the, it returned visit to the Sculpteur Bernhard Hoetger in its workshop. When a fortuitous remark of Paula indicated to Hoetger that it dealt with artist, it insisted to examine its fabrics, and was amazed. For Paula Modersohn-Becker, who had hitherto found support in her artistic calling only for Worpswede near her husband and Rainer Maria Rilke, the praises which it accepted were worth of gold. The May 5th 1906, it wrote:

“Did You to me miracles. You restored me with myself. I took courage. My courage was always behind condemned doors and did not know how to leave. You opened these doors. You are to me of a great help. I now start to believe that something will remain of me. And when I think of it, come me the tears from the happiness… You returned to me so happy. I was a little alone. ”

The appreciation of Hoetger encouraged then Paula to deploy without fear all the force of its painting. The number of fabrics carried out between 1906 and 1907 is estimated at approximately ninety. Its biographer Lieselotte von Reinken makes the remark besides that it would be doubtful of physically being able to allot such an amount of work to only one and even nobody, if the letters and the newspaper of the artist were not there to attest it.

Paula dedicated mainly her time to the paintings of naked. In addition to these dead natural last and some , this time also counts many self-portraits such as the Autoportrait with the lemon , where the artist generally appears with naked half. It went until inaugurating a new kind in the Histoire of art, namely the entirely naked self-portrait. (to see above)

Last stay with Worpswede

The September 3rd 1906, Paula Modersohn-Becker informed her husband that it would understand that he wants Divorce R, and asked for to him a very last sum of 500 mark S. Thereafter, it would commit itself providing itself for its needs. It reconsidered its decision however hardly a few days later, the September 9th, and was solved to return to Worpswede. This change of attitude must be mainly charged to Bernhard Hoetger, which had meanwhile put forward with the young woman at which point its situation would be degraded if it had to ensure itself her subsistence. She wrote on this subject with Clara Westhoff, the November 17th:

“I noticed this summer that I was not woman with knowing to remain alone (...) If I am right wrong or, only the future will be able to decide some. The main thing for my work, it is peace, and I am not certainly likely to miss some at the sides of Otto Modersohn. ”

Otto Modersohn had arrived at Paris as of October to spend the winter with it there. It settled in a workshop located at the same building as that of his wife. In March 1907, the couple set out again for Worpswede. Few fabrics date from the period which follows: Paula had finally had the joy of falling pregnant, but suffered at the same time not to be able more to as many spend each day hours as before in front of her rest. Among last works which it could complete, one counts the Vieille servant with the garden : the old woman, surrounded by a field of Poppy S savages, holds a stem in her hand. The artist, in this fabric, compares and adapts expensive topics to the Na5ive art. Work was followed of a last self-portrait, the Autoportrait with the camellias (see at the head article).

The November 2nd, at the time of a particularly difficult Childbirth, Paula put at the world a girl, Mathilde. The doctor prescribed with the young mother tested to hold the bed during several days. The November 20th, whereas one authorized it for the first time to be risen, Paula Modersohn-Becker was the victim of a pulmonary Embolie, and died in its thirty-and-unième year.

Work

The work of Paula Modersohn-Becker primarily consists of natural dead, Paysage S and Portrait S of adults or children evoking the country life with Worpswede. As for the self-portraits, the artist realized some throughout his life. It is thus comparable with Käthe Kollwitz, in the sense that its successive self-portraits accurately reflect the evolution of its style. In its memories, Heinrich Vogeler reconsiders this characteristic of the young woman:

“Paula Becker frequently painted itself. Except for the earliest fabrics and simplest, these self-portraits are those of a woman taking little by little full conscience of its Article the upper lip loses its softness, and the clear and observant glance of the eyes is underlined with energy. ”
(according to Murken-Altrogge, p. 72)

The year 1906 was particularly prolific in self-portraits, in which Paula tried to mark her independence compared to her husband. It is also of this time which its naked self-portraits date, first of the kind in the Histoire of art. This daring step went against all former artistic conventions.

The landscapes occupy a central place in the work of the artist, and find their inspiration principal in the marshy area extending to the North-East from Bremen, around Worpswede. This very stripped, filled up region wet moors, river, channels, dunes and of Peaty S, is returned with a great poetry by Paula Modersohn-Becker, who can underline the extreme melancholy and exploit of it the effects of Ombre.

The rural scenes are of an anti assumed Romantisme. One detects no particular social ideology in addition there, contrary to the more committed fabrics of Käthe Kollwitz. The tables of Paula Modersohn-Becker are rather dominated by a diffuse feeling of sympathy to the human being, without particular message. This representation without artifice of the country life marks a rupture with the preceding painters, who tightened with héroïser this life with more close to the Nature. The pictorial universe of the artist has also little in common with the more conventional illustrations of the country world conveyed by the artistic circle of Worpswede.

The portraits of children also shine them by their originality. Stripped of any sentimentalism, of any ludic or anecdotic aspect, these fabrics offer a serious vision and not clearing of childhood. Paula Modersohn-Becker is thus clearly detached portraits from children of the 19th century, realized by artists such as Hans Thoma or Ferdinand Waldmüller. This very personal representation of the childish universe was not without causing certain incomprehension. The historian of art Christa Murken-Altrogge underlined the similarities stylistics between these fabrics and the first compositions of the young person Pablo Picasso, who knew then his blue period and his pink period. Other tables of Paula betray besides the influence of the movement cubist.

Contrary to the academic rules most elementary, works are very often of a very reduced format: Paula, so tended to paint on all the space of fabric available, and it is not rare that the framework of the table dissimulates part of the composition.

Posterity

One must above all with the active engagement of Heinrich Vogeler that the fabrics of Paula Modersohn-Becker could be presented in several exposures during the years having followed its death. Vogeler was indeed the first to carry out all the range of the artist and his work. The majority of the biographers of Paula see in this behavior the mark of a certain remorse, at this man who had up to that point considered the young woman only as the wife of his friend Otto Modersohn. Paula, during her life, seems to have sold only approximately five fabrics. Thereafter, on the other hand, and thanks to the various exposures organized by Vogeler, some informed collectors noticed the originality of the tables and acquérirent some more. One counts among them Herbert von Garvens and August von der Heydt, which did not buy less than twenty-eight fabrics under the impulse of Rilke. The patron Ludwig Roselius, as for him, financed the opening of the Musée Paula Modersohn-Becker, with Bremen (to see below). In 1913, 129 fabrics were exposed to the Kunsthalle of Bremen, and attracted each other increasingly many admirors because of their formal originality and their powerful symbolic system.

In 1917, at the time of the tenth birthday of died of Paula Modersohn-Becker, the association Kestner of Hanover, organized a great exposure of its work and published an extract of its letters and its newspaper. The collection, published under the title an artist: Paula Becker-Modersohn - Letters and Newspaper , gained a great success and made known the painter. These texts were republished several times, including in book of pocket after the Second world war. They contributed to diffuse a portrait enough sentimentalist of their author, by reducing the latter to some caricatural features: an young woman, dreaming to become an artist, succeeds in surmounting all the obstacles, guarantees herself against a possible destiny of controlling by marrying a recognized artist, feels captive at the end of a few last years in couple and tries to break the yoke for finally dying of it shortly after while giving birth to. This admiration felt for the determination with which Paula sought her own artistic way, paradoxically, resulted in distorting the glance related to its work. The very personal writings of Paula Modersohn-Becker, which had obviously never been conceived to be published, contain a romantic and exalté tone which enters in contradiction with the pictorial language of the artist. In its foreword with the complete edition published in 1979, Günter Busch regrets thus that Paula Modersohn-Becker is taken for a “fantastic and enlightened character”. To that is added that the extracts chosen in 1917, very often, were not accompanied by the many corrections which corresponded to them. This is why one could for example there to read premonition made by young woman of her death early, at the time of Disease according to its first stay Parisian, but not it “And that lasts still a long time” that she added with relief thereafter, after having found its good health.

The first catalog counting the work of the artist was completed in 1919 by Gustav Pauli, historian of art and director of Kunsthalle of Bremen. The work did not contain whereas 259 references, and was thus little by little wide during the years which followed. Paula Modersohn-Becker was classified there in the group of the artists of Worpswede, although it is characterized some by many aspects stylistics. Its landscapes, for example, show more spiritual relationship with the fabrics of a max Pechstein or a Gabriele Münter.

Many exposures followed until in 1933. With the advent of the National-socialisme, work, like so much of others, was described as “degenerated Art”. The fabrics had left the Musée S, and some of enters were sold abroad. Up to that point, Paula Modersohn-Becker was very largely unknown out of Germany: the dissemination of its tables caused to also make it appreciate elsewhere in the world. The artist does not remain about it not ignored no longer enough: its importance in the history of art, that some had perceived at the beginning of the 20th century, is especially allowed today in the German-speaking areas. Contrary to Gauguin, Cézanne or Van Gogh, Paula Modersohn-Becker the source of inspiration of major artists did not become itself and did not have time sufficiently to develop its style to make a “ of it; école ” with whole share, which undoubtedly explains mainly the relative insulation of its work.

The systematic study of the fabrics of Paula Modersohn-Becker as a whole was committed for the first time after the Second world war, at the time of great retrospectives and of days of memory. The appreciation carried by To groove Maria Rilke, shortly after the death of the young woman, was thus taken again and devoted by criticism: one redécouvrit that the artist nourished a narrow relationship with new the current stylistics of the beginning of the 20th century. Filled with enthusiasm by the work of the artists French of the avant-garde, which it had the occasion to meet on several occasions, Paula Modersohn-Becker could develop its own pictorial language, in which show through of the elements of Expressionnisme, of Fauvisme, Cubisme and even of the inspirations much older.

In 1978, his/her daughter Mathilde (1907 - 1998) founded the Foundation Paula Modersohn-Becker ( Paula Modersohn-Becker-Stiftung ).

The museum Paula Modersohn-Becker in Bremen

The Museum Paula Modersohn-Becker, located at Bremen in the famous street Böttcherstraße , proposes a selection of some of the chiefs of work of the artist. The museum and its building of style expressionnist owe their existence with an initiative of the local patron Ludwig Roselius, which charged Bernhard Hoetger tracing the plans with it and installed its personal collection of fabrics there. The museum opened its doors the June 2nd 1927 under the name of “House Paula Becker-Modersohn” ( Paula-Becker-Modersohn-Haus ). Roselius had indeed expressed the desire to make appear the name of young girl of Paula in first. The collection of Ludwig Roselius could then extend regularly by the means of new acquisitions and, starting from 1978, thanks to the financial support of the Foundation Paula Modersohn-Becker.

The museum in addition contains a whole of Sculpture S, tables and of Dessin S of Bernhard Hoetger, and a space is reserved for the temporary exhibitions.

See too

Museum Paula Modersohn-Becker.

German-speaking bibliography

Paula Modersohn-Becker & Sophie Dorothee Gallwitz, Eine Künstlerin: Paula Becker-Modersohn. Briefe und Tagebuchblätter. Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hanover, 1917
Günter Busch & Liselotte von Reinken, Paula Modersohn-Becker in Briefen und Tagebüchern , Fischer Editions, Francfort-sur-le-Main, 1979 (ISBN 3-10-050601-4) (work from which all the quotations from the letters and the newspaper of the artist are draw)
Liselotte von Reinken, Paula Modersohn-Becker put Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten , Éditions Rowohlt Taschenbuch, 1983 (ISBN 3-499-50317-4) (a short biography interesting and written well on the artist)
Christa Murken-Altrogge, Paula Modersohn-Becker. DuMont Buchverlag, Cologne, 1991 (ISBN 3-7701-2677-7)
Marina Bohlmann-Modersohn, Paula Modersohn-Becker. Eine Biographie put Briefen. , 3rd edition, Knaus, Berlin, 1997 (ISBN 3-8135-2594-5)
Norbert Weiss & Jens Wonneberger, Dichter Denker Literaten aus sechs Jahrhunderten in Dresden. , Dresden, 1997
Gabriele Gorgas, Eine der Großen Jahrhunderts sharps. Erstes umfassendes Werkverzeichnis der Gemälde von Paula Modersohn-Becker erschienen. , in DNN. , August 2nd 1999
Dieter Salt, Ein kurzes, intensive Fest. VOR 125 Jahren wurde die Malerin Paula Modersohn-Becker in Dresden geboren. , in Sonntag. , February 11th 2001
Siegfried Merker, Nachtrag zu Paula Modersohn. (correspondence), in DNN. February 24th 2001
Monika Keuthen, „… und ich male doch! “Paula Modersohn-Becker , List Editions, 2001
Peter Elze, Göttertage. Paula Modersohn-Becker in Bildern, Briefen und Tagebuchaufzeichnungen aus Worpswede. , Editions Beste Zeiten, 2003
To groove Stamm, Ein kurzes intensive Fest - Paula Modersohn-Becker , Reclam-Verlag, 2007 (ISBN 3150106273) (a biography recent, published at the time of the centenary of died of the artist, stressing particular on its stays in Paris and the inspirations that Modersohn-Becker had in this city.)

External bonds

(December 31st, 2005, German-speaking Wikipédia)
Site of the museum Paula Modersohn-Becker
www.paulamodersohnbecker.com: Biography, work, references
Paula Modersohn-Becker on Artcyclopedia
of ten minutes on the artist (in English, format RAM)

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