GC Open #63
*****
Paula Modersohn-Becker (8 February 1876 – 20 November 1907) was a German Expressionist painter of the late 19th and early 20th century. She is noted for the many self-portraits the artist produced, including nude self-portraits. She is considered one of the most important representatives of early expressionism, producing more than 700 paintings and over 1000 drawings during her active painting life. She is recognized both as the first known woman painter to paint nude self-portraits, and the first woman to have a museum devoted exclusively to her art (the Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum, founded 1927). Additionally, she is considered to be the first woman artist to depict herself both pregnant and nude and pregnant.
Her career was cut short when she died from postpartum pulmonary embolism at the age of 31.
Becker was born and grew up in Dresden-Friedrichstadt. She was the third of seven children in her family. Her father, Carl Woldemar Becker (1841–1901), the Odessa born son of a Russian university professor of French, was employed as an engineer with the German railway. Her mother, Mathilde (1852–1926), was from the aristocratic von Bültzingslöwen family, and her parents provided their children a cultured and intellectual household environment.
Despite these advantages of family, the Beckers found themselves in socially constrained circumstances. In 1861, Oskar Becker, Carl's brother, in an unsuccessful assassination attempt, had shot King Wilhelm of Prussia in the neck. The King was not severely injured, and Oskar was pardoned five years later for the crime (on condition that he permanently leave the country), but the constraints of opportunity for Carl Becker's family would linger.
In 1888 the family moved from Dresden to Bremen, where Carl Becker had obtained a position on the building board of the Prussian Railway Administration. The family interacted with Bremen's local artistic and intellectual circles, and Paula began to learn to draw. In the summer of 1892, her parents sent her to relatives in England to learn English. While living with a maternal aunt in London, Becker received her first instruction in drawing at St John's Wood Art School.
After returning to Bremen, she studied at a teacher's seminary from 1893 to 1895, as her father wished (two sisters also attended this program). Concurrently she received private painting lessons from local German painter Bernhard Wiegandt.
She worked as a painter from ~1893, at age 16, and was allowed to set up her first studio in the extension of her parents' house in Bremen (later Haus Paula Becker, with Becker's early studio intact). From this period comes a series of portraits of her siblings and also the first self-portrait (1893). She completed her teacher's course "with flying colors," but it was clear that she had little intention of pursuing a career in that profession.
In the spring of 1896, Paula was able to travel to Berlin to take part in a six-week drawing and painting course organized by the Berlin Artists' Association (Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen), again, staying with members of her mother's family while completing her course. After graduating, she stayed on in Berlin, and in February 1897 was admitted to the first class of painting at the Women's Academy. Paula additionally used her Berlin time to visit its art museums, studying the works of German and Italian artists. An encounter with an important proponent for German feminism, Natalie von Milde, made a deep impression, although swift intervention from her family cut that connection short.
After these years of study, Becker returned to Bremen. She convinced her family to allow her to attend a further course of study at the nearby artists’ colony in the northern German town of Worpswede.
Becker had become familiar with the Worpswede colony as early as 1895, when Fritz Mackensen, Otto Modersohn, Fritz Overbeck and Heinrich Vogeler presented their paintings in Bremen's Art Museum, Kunsthalle Bremen. The colony had begun when Mackensen and Heinrich Vogeler had retreated to the countryside, partly as a protest against the domination of the art academy style and life in the big city, and also to save on expenses.
In 1898, as a pupil of Mackensen, Becker joined the Worpswede group. She created "sentimental" landscapes and scenes of peasant life, painting, in the Worpswede manner, the local farmers and northern German landscape. At this time she began close friendships with the sculptor Clara Westhoff (1875–1954), the painter Ottilie Reylaender (1882-1965), and the poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926). It was quickly evident, however, that Worpswede was not suited to Becker's rapidly developing artistic style. In her journal, Becker wrote: "the way Mackensen portrays people is not broad enough, too genre-like for me."
Two paintings she exhibited at the Bremen Kunsthalle in December 1899 were sharply criticized and had to be removed during the exhibition, having been subject to a "hysterical" attack by the art critic Arthur Fitger (later regarded as having been more outraged by the inclusion of female artists in the show than in anything particular portrayed by the actual artworks). While the community at Worpswede "remained rooted in romanticized traditions of landscape, her own artistic interests were shifting noticeably toward Paris and leaving her feeling increasingly alienated.
Paris at the turn of the 20th century was the acknowledged epicenter of artistic exploration, and many artists of the time felt its pull. Westhoff, Becker's close friend, left Bremen in early 1899 to study in Paris with Auguste Rodin (Rilke went with her, serving for a time as Rodin's secretary). By December of that year, Becker, having come into a small inheritance, followed her friend there, and in 1900 she began study anatomy at the Académie Colarossi in the Latin Quarter. She also visited museums or exhibitions and galleries alone or with Westhoff to get to know modern French painters. She was particularly impressed by the paintings of Paul Cézanne, and Les Nabis, who emphasized the importance of colored areas in paintings following the example of Paul Gauguin. "In her painting, she followed the inspiration of the contemporary artists she had encountered in Paris, moving increasingly far from the conventional painting her colleagues at Worpswede were producing." They inspired her to use simplified forms and symbolic, rather than naturalistic, colour.
In April 1900, the great World's Fair Centennial Exhibition opened in Paris. Otto Modersohn, a Worpswede painter who had been an on-and-off resident of the colony since 1897, arrived in town with mutual friends to attend. His sick wife Helene had remained behind in Worpswede, and she died during Modersohn's short time in Paris. Modersohn hurried back to Germany. Shortly thereafter, Becker returned to Worpswede herself. It was clear to Becker's parents that the two had become personally involved, but their disapproval was of little impact.
Source: Wikipedia
*****
For the Rules of this Open series and the current List of caches see the GC Open #01 listing.
Many thanks to ivans for this nice idea :-)
General information on the maintenance of our caches:
We generally have a well-coordinated maintenance team (good friends who help each other). But sometimes it is better to accept help from the geocaching community. This should prevent geo-garbage and also improve the overall experience & more fun for all geocachers. We have deliberately decided not to use this procedure for all of our caches. This cache is part of the GCRM / GCRL cooperative. For more information see here: https://gcrm.gocacher.com/