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 cultural 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.
