Paula Modersohn-Becker:

"Who speaks of victory?"

Minna Hermine Paula Becker, better known as Paula Modersohn-Becker, was born on February 8, 1876 in Dresden, Germany.

Paula became interested in painting at an early age, beginning to study drawing in 1888, when her family moved to Bremen. She sent to England to complete her education and learn English, she there she also took art courses at the St. John's Wood Art School. In 1896 he moved to Berlin to study at the Association of Berlin Artists (Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen), because at this time, women still did not have access to the academies of Fine Arts. Upon her return, the artist trained to become a teacher and then attended (1896-98) the traditional School for Women Artists in Berlin.

In 1898, Paula joined the Worpswede Country Artists' Colony, a group of (regional) artists who lived there near Bremen. In Worpswede, she met the sculptor Clara Westhoff who would later marry the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. In 1900 they traveled together to Paris, where she Paula discovered with amazement the works of Paul Cézanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh.

In 1901, the artist cso with Otto Modersohn, un paintedor landscaper from Worpswede. She spent two more periods of study in Paris in 1903 and 1905, and the contemporary art she discovered there left her increasingly dissatisfied with the goals of the Worpswede artists. The work of Cézanne, Gauguin, and other French artists, such as those of the Nabis group, inspired her to use simplified forms and symbolic color, rather than naturalistic. She left her husband in 1906 to settle in Paris. Her husband followed her there later that year, and they returned to Worpswede together in 1907.

Because she was more interested in the expression of her feelings than in the accurate representation of reality, she is frequently associated with the expressionist and post-expressionist style.

Paula painted a lot on the theme of motherhood (mothers, babies and children), scenes with old women, peasants, landscapes with moons and sunsets, paths, peat bogs and mud, chickens, cats and flowers- and also nude self-portraits. (and pregnant) because I had no dienough money to pay the models. Very daring and original self-portraits for the time.

Paula left nearly 755 canvases, 13 prints and about 1,000 drawings, full of poetry and experimental force.

 “I live in a strange time. Perhaps the most serious of my short life. I feel like everyone is scared of me. But I still have to move on. There is no return.”

Three weeks after the birth ofe her daughter Tillie (Matilde), with apeAt the age of 31, he died of a pulmonary embolism in Worpswede on November 20, 1907.

In 1927, a museum dedicated to his work was opened in Bremen. It was the first museum in the world dedicated to a female artist.

In 2007, Paula's house and studio were also converted into a museum.

In 2016, the Museum of Modern Art from Paris dedicated an exhibition to her entitled, Paula Becker: “the intensity of a look”.

“Who talks about victory?

Resistance is everything.”

 

Rilke wrote Requiem for Paula Modersohn-Becker  on October 31, and published on November 2, 1908, in Paris.

According to the writer Marie Darrieussecq, who in 2016 dedicated a book to the painter, (Being here is a splendor: vdeparture of Paula M. Becker) his last words were: “ What a pity!"

Well, you understood this: full fruits.
You put them on plates in front of you,
and measures with colors their weight.
And just as fruits you also contemplated women.
And you also saw the children, tending
from within to the various forms of its existence.
And at last you saw yourself as a fruit.
You stole from your clothes and posed in front
of the mirror, you got into it, inside it,
except your look. Your huge look was left out
and he didn't say: that's me; no, but only: That's it.

That's how I want to keep you, just like
you posed in the mirrors, inside your depth,
and away from everything.

Rilke, Requiem for a friend.

 

 

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