An artist so well-known in Germany that a museum dedicated to her work was the world’s first devoted to a single woman artist is finally getting a solo exhibit and attention in the U.S.
“Paula Modersohn-Becker: Ich bin Ich / I Am Me” is on view at the Neue Galerie in New York until September 9th, and will open in October at the Art Institute in Chicago. Moderson-Becker, who died in 1907 at age 31, spent most of her working career Worpswede, a northern Germany village that was also home to a number of other artists and poets. She was a major figure of German Expressionism.
Her work, in a number of media, throws strong light and a realist vision on the local people who were often her models, showing them physically as they were without romanticizing them, and yet showing them with inner lives. Late in her life she also began incorporating images and forms drawn from African masks she studied in Paris.
Image courtesy Neue Galerie
