Paula Modersohn-Becker

Edited by Jay A. Clarke and Jill Lloyd-Peppiatt This exhibition catalog considers the work of a pioneering artist who subverted conventions in her bold depictions of the nude, self-portraits, and still-lifes. 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. Hardcover208 pagesPrestel, 20249.25 x 11.25 x .75 inchesISBN 9783791377346Neue Galerie Exhibition Catalogue

Paula Modersohn-Becker Exhibition Catalogue

This book was featured in our Lecture Series. Translated by Ulrich Baer from the collection edited by Rainer StammIntroduction by Jill LloydThe painter Paula Modersohn-Becker and the poet Rainer Maria Rilke were two of the most talented and original creative artists at work in early twentieth-century Europe. They enjoyed a close friendship that left in its wake a remarkable series of letters. Encompassing topics such as art, literature, and the nature of marriage, their correspondence testifies to both writers’ brilliant descriptive gifts and penetrating social intelligence. Brought together in English for the first time, the letters that Modersohn-Becker and Rilke sent to one another provide a fascinating view of everyday life during an exceptionally fertile and exciting period of cultural production.Paperback120 pagesEris Press, 20247.8 x 5.1 inchesISBN 9781916809901Biography, Correspondence, Art History

The Modersohn-Becker/Rilke Correspondence

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907) Self-Portrait with Two Flowers in Her Raised Left Hand, 1907

Paula Modersohn-Becker: Self-Portrait with Two Flowers [Postcard]

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907) Standing and Kneeling Nude Girls in Front of Poppies II, 1906

Paula Modersohn-Becker: Standing and Kneeling Nude Girls in Front of Poppies II [Postcard]

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907)Self-Portrait with Two Flowers in Her Raised Left Hand, 1907 Poster for the exhibition Paula Modersohn-Becker: Ich bin Ich / I Am Me 18 x 24 inches

Paula Modersohn-Becker: Ich bin Ich / I Am Me Exhibition Poster

Original Price: $15 UP TO 20% ADDITIONAL SAVINGS FOR MEMBERS By Frank LaukötterWhen Paula Modersohn-Becker’s artist friends examined her extensive estate a few weeks after her death in 1907, they were overwhelmed. Only gradually did they realize that in the painter, dead at thirty-one, they had had an outstanding artist in their midst. Today Modersohn-Becker is regarded as one of the pioneers of Expressionism.Sculptor Bernhard Hoetger was one of the few people who recognized Modersohn-Becker’s talent from an early stage. In 1920, he published a book collecting his memories of her, and they are reproduced as facsimile here. In addition to Hoetger’s writings, the book offers an essay tracing Modersohn-Becker’s life and work from a present-day perspective, together with a traditional biographical sketch and reproductions of forty of her most important works.Hardcover72 pages | 49 color platesHirmer Publishers, 20205.3 x 8 inches ISBN 9783777434896Artist Monograph, Expressionism

Paula Modersohn-Becker (Great Masters in Art)

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907) Nude Girl with Flower Vases, 1906-07

Paula Modersohn Becker: Nude Girl with Flower Vases [Postcard]

Exhibition notecard for "Paula Modersohn-Becker: Ich bin Ich / I am Me"June 6 — September 9, 2024Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907)Self-Portrait with Two Flowers in Her Raised Left Hand, 19071 notecard and envelope5.75 x 8.75 inches

Paula Modersohn-Becker: Ich bin Ich / I am Me Exhibition Notecard [Single Card]

By Sue Hubbard“A triumph of literary and artistic understanding, a tour de force: Masterly, moving and beautifully written.” —Fay WeldonA dazzling novel about groundbreaking artist, Paula Modersohn-Becker—a brilliant early expressionist who toiled under the shadow of her lover Rainer Maria RilkeGirl in White is the extraordinary story of the German expressionist painter Paula Modershohn-Becker (1876-1907), told from the fictionalized perspective of her daughter, Mathilde.Written with the eye of a painter and the soul of a poet this moving story is a meditation on love, loss, memory and, ultimately, hope.Paula Modersohn-Becker was a pioneer of modern art in Europe, but denounced as degenerate by the Nazis after her death. Poet and art critic Sue Hubbard draws on the artist’s diaries and paintings to bring to life her singular existence, her battle to achieve independence and recognition and her intense relationship with the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, and her struggle to find a balance between being a painter, wife, and mother.Not only do we discover Paula’s vibrant personality and rich legacy of Expressionist paintings, but also come to understand something of the corrupted ideologies of the Third Reich in a book that’s perfect for fans of books like Georgia by Dawn Tripp and The Age of Light by Whitney Scharer.Paperback320 pagesPushkin Press, 20235 x 7.77 inchesISBN 9781782279129Historical Fiction

Girl in White

By Eric Torgersen "It was not until I read Requiem for a Friend in Eric Torgersen's translation that I understood what a great and tragic poem it is: guilt-ridden, impassioned, intimate, a sublimated howl. Torgersen's version is one of those rare complete successes in the absolutely impossible art of translation."—Galway Kinnell"A brilliant and valuable study, written with grace and passion, Torgesen's work could scarcely be bettered, both for the delight of reading it provides and for the insights into the lives it exposes."—Choice"As a guide through the intersecting lives and relevant work of Rilke, Modersohn-Becker, and Westhoff, this study has qualitatively and in its focus no parallel in either English or German."—Reinhold Heller, University of ChicagoIn 1908, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote Requiem for a Friend in memory of Paula Moderson-Becker, the German painter who had profoundly affected him and who had died a year earlier. Although one of the great modern painters, Modersohn-Becker is remembered primarily as she is portrayed in Rilke's poem. Dear Friend looks at the relationship of two great artists whose often-strained friendship was extraordinarily productive for both. Paperback 276 pagesNorthwestern University Press, 20006 x 0.8 x 9 inchesISBN 9780810118195Biography, Letters, Poetry

Dear Friend: Rainer Maria Rilke and Paula Modersohn-Becker

By Dorothy Price, Shulamith Behr, Chantal Joffe, Sarah LeaKäthe Kollwitz (1867–1945), Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907), Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) and Marianne Werefkin (1860–1938) are among the exceptional artists associated with the emergence of Expressionism in Germany in the early decades of the 20th century. Each challenged prevailing ideals of feminine identity at a time of great societal change. As women, they were expected to marry and raise a family; some chose to, some did not. As ambitious artists, they wanted to work.As they rose to these challenges, their art further undermined conventions. Their portraits of children symbolize joy, hope and innocence but also melancholy, tension, curiosity, the passing of time and unfulfilled desire. Their radical depictions of the nude wrest the female body away from the male gaze toward a newfound role, expressive of powerful maternity and female subjectivity.These dramatic modernist compositions, with their fluid brushwork and bright hues, push at the boundaries of form, color and spiritual meaning. Accompanying a major exhibition in London, this volume looks at the innovations and interconnections of these Expressionist pioneers.Hardcover144 pagesRoyal Academy of Arts, 20239 x 0.75 x 10.5 inchesISBN 9781912520909Modernism, Expressionism

Making Modernism: Paula Modersohn-Becker, Käthe Kollwitz, Gabriele Münter and Marianne Werefkin

By Diane Radycki Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) painted her last self-portrait in 1907, while she was in her third trimester. In the painting she gazes straight at the viewer, holding up two flowers—symbols representing the creativity and procreativity of women artists—and resting a protective hand atop her swelling belly. Modersohn-Becker would die three weeks after giving birth, at age 31, still to be recognized as the first woman artist to challenge centuries of representations of the female body. An essay by art historian Diane Radycki surveys Modersohn-Becker's career and her posthumous recognition. Paperback48 pagesMuseum of Modern Art, 20197.25 x 9 inchesISBN 9781633450745Artist Monograph, Painting, Portrait, Woman Artist

Paula Modersohn-Becker: Self-Portrait with Two Flowers

Edited with text by Theodora Vischer Text by Tere Arcq, Andreas Beyer, Tamar Garb, Peter Geimer, Anna-Carola Krausse, Sylvie Patry, Uwe M. Schneede, Jennifer Thompson, and Hilda Trujillo. Gender interventions and formal innovations in female portraiture, through works by Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Lotte Laserstein, Frida Kahlo, Alice Neel, Marlene Dumas, Cindy Sherman, Elizabeth Peyton This superbly conceived publication looks at nine women artists whose careers were devoted primarily to portraiture, analyzing both the work they produced and the unique ways in which each artist captured her subjects’ likenesses and the spaces they inhabited. These artists represent the development of modernist art since 1870; each has made significant contributions to art history as they complicate long-held notions of the gaze and explore the relationship between the self, the subject and the artist. Close-Up examines women painters and photographers who are known primarily for self-portraiture, such as Paula Modersohn-Becker, Frida Kahlo and Cindy Sherman; it also looks at female artists who depicted the daily lives of women and children in a creative environment that was largely disinterested in such subjects, such as Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt and Lotte Laserstein. Still other women—Alice Neel, Marlene Dumas and Elizabeth Peyton—embrace familiarity completely and depict friends and family as well as famous figures in their paintings. In essays by nine different authors, these artists and their subjects are considered individually and as part of a chronology of modern portraiture, with an emphasis on the dynamics of gender. Paperback344 pages | 215 color illustrationsHatje Cantz, 2021ISBN 97837757475787.5 x 10.25 inchesWomen Artists, Painting, Photography

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