Paula Modersohn-Becker Gebunden

A pioneering artist who subverted conventions in her depictions of the nude self-portraits and still-lives. An iconoclast in her own time Modersohn-Becker is today considered an icon of modernity. Throughout her career Paula Modersohn-Becker boldly experimented with styles while steadfastly pursuing the truth of everyday life and her own female experience. This monograph looks at the entire spectrum of her work-figure drawings still-lifes self-portraiture landscape nudes and portraits of young girls and old women-to illustrate the evolution of an artist reacting to seismic cul tural change at the turn of the nineteenth century. Whether she was embracing or subverting the principles of realism naturalism impressionism symbolism or expressionism Modersohn-Becker remained interested in issues of identity peeling away outer layers to uncover what she understood as the true essence of life. This book features numerous examples of Modersohn-Becker's striking and relatively unknown drawings of men women and children facing poverty as well as her highly original figure paintings and nudes-including her unprecedented nude self-portraits. Accompanying the first museum exhibition of Modersohn-Becker's work in the United States it reveals the deeply personal and authentic work of an artist who resolutely forged her own path.