In the 1900s, Paula Modersohn-Becker lived in the artists' village of Worpswede near Bremen. She died at age 31. She painted in a man's world when, at the time, in museums or galleries, there were “Immensely fewer women exhibitors than women exhibited, and the latter (…) very often naked »as Marie Darrieussecq writes in Being here is a splendor. Life of Paula M. Beckerthe book she dedicated to the German artist in 2016. The same year, an exhibition was held at the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris which revealed her to the French public.
Paula M. Becker paints the children and peasant women of the Bremen moor, rarely their husbands, busy in the fields and unavailable to pose. She cherishes the flowers that the models hold gracefully in front of them or that rise as tall as trees. It is attached to everyday objects (vases, jars, small blue box, etc.). She shows cabbages, fried eggs from hearty meals and citrus fruits in bright tones. From her four stays in Paris, she brought to Worpswede desires for a new figuration marked by the influence of Gauguin, Cézanne, the Nabis or the coming Cubism. Otto Modersohn, also a painter, famous “the immense sense of color” of his wife, but deplores a “garish, disharmonious painting”. In her formal research, Paula M. Becker shakes off the post-impressionist torpor and the Art Nouveau in vogue in her country. It prefigures the expressionism of the 1920s. It is a free look. She is also the first woman to paint herself nude.
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