Paula Modersohn-Becker

Expressionist pioneer Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907) created groundbreaking works that bridged Post-Impressionism and early German modernism. Born in Dresden, she settled at the Worpswede artists' colony in northern Germany, where she developed a distinctive style using simplified forms and symbolic color. Her self-portraits and images of mothers with children pushed beyond naturalism toward emotional truth. She may have been the first woman to paint a full-length nude self-portrait and the first artist to make pregnancy visible in art.

Modersohn-Becker studied at the School for Women Artists in Berlin and made multiple trips to Paris (1900, 1903, 1905, 1906-07), where she absorbed the work of Cézanne, Gauguin, and the Nabis. Her earthy palette and complex textures, achieved by scratching into wet paint, created surfaces unlike any of her contemporaries. She married fellow Worpswede painter Otto Modersohn in 1901 and maintained close friendships with sculptor Clara Westhoff and poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Tragically, she died of postpartum embolism at age 31, just 18 days after giving birth to her daughter Mathilde. Bremen's Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum, opened in 1927, was the first museum dedicated to a female artist. Her work also hangs at the Museum of Modern Art and the National Gallery of Art.