LE CLAIRE KUNST SEIT 1982

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LE CLAIRE KUNST SEIT 1982

PAULA MODERSOHN-BECKER 1876 Dresden-Friedrichstadt - Worpswede 1907

Seated Girl with a Black Hat and a Flower in her Right Hand

Tempera on canvas, c.1903 69.8 x 44.7 cm

PROVENANCE: Otto Modersohn – Philine Vogeler, Worpswede – Galerie Commeter, Hamburg (no. 416) – Hermann Hertzer, Hanover (1934) – Sprengel Collection, Hanover

LITERATURE: , Paula Modersohn-Becker, ed. , I, no. 59, p. 55, listed as Bauernmädchen, Halbfigur (Das neue Bild, Bücher für die Kunst der Gegenwart, Leipzig 1919); Pauli 1934 (3rd edn.), no. 62b, duplicate entry, re-listed as Mädchen im Strohhut mit Marienblümchen in der Hand – Carl Emil Uphoff, Paula Modersohn-Becker, II, repr. (Junge Kunst, Leipzig 1919) – Günther Busch and Wolfgang Werner (eds.), Paula Modersohn-Becker 1876-1907, Werkverzeichnis der Gemälde, 1998, II, no. 393, p. 275, repr.

EXHIBITIONS: Kunstausstellung, Kunst- und Kunstgewerbehaus Franz Vogeler, Worpswede n.d., no. 7 – Paula Modersohn-Becker, Kunsthalle , 1913, Journal no. 30 (one venue of an exhibition staged in various configurations travelling to: Museum Folkwang, Hagen; Neuer Kunstsalon, Munich; Kunstverein Jena; Haus des Freiherrn von der Heydt, Elberfeld) – Paula Modersohn-Becker, Gemälde, Zeichnungen, Radierungen, Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hanover 1934, no. 31 – Paula Modersohn-Becker - Gabriele Münter, Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hanover 1951, no. 22 – Zeitgenössische Kunst aus Hannoverschem Privatbesitz, Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hanover 1954, no. 113 – Roland Doschka, Musen ‒ Modelle ‒ Malerlegenden ‒ von Renoir bis Warhol, exhib. cat., Haug-Erkinger-Festsaal, Rechberghausen 2007, no. 5, unpag., repr. – Vittorio Sgarbi, Hans Albert Peters and Beatrice F. Buscaroli, L’Arte delle Donne dal Rinascimento al Surrealismo, exhib. cat., Palazzo Reale, Milan 2007, p. 169, repr. – Paula Modersohn-Becker, Gemälde, Zeichnungen, exhib. cat., Graphisches Kabinett, Kunsthandel Wolfgang Werner, Bremen/ 2007, no. 7, unpag., repr. – Paula Modersohn-Becker ‒ Pionierin der Moderne, exhib. cat., Kunsthalle Krems 2010, p. 119, repr.

Julia Voss, art critic of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, wrote in the FAZ Feuilleton on 16 October 2007: Germany’s Picasso is a woman (Feuilleton no. 240, p. 37). She was referring to Paula Modersohn-Becker, whose work as of one of the foremost pioneers of German Expressionist painting and leading female artist of the Expressionist movement is frequently compared with that of Pablo Picasso, the most versatile and influential artist of the twentieth century. Her life, in contrast to his, was very short, and in her day the role of a woman artist was quite different. At the turn of the twentieth century women were still denied admittance to the prestigious fine art academies to train as artists. However Paula Becker was able to enjoy private tuition thanks to the support of her cultured, cosmopolitan family in Bremen. She began visiting Worspwede, an artists’ colony just outside Bremen, in the late 1890s and moved there in 1898 to continue her studies. It was here she met, and in 1901, married the landscapist Otto Modersohn, a co-founder of the colony. Life in the colony brought her into contact

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LE CLAIRE KUNST SEIT 1982

with Rainer Maria Rilke who encouraged her to visit Paris. She stayed there often, discovering the paintings of van Gogh and Cézanne and the work of the Parisian avant-garde. She produced an important body of self-portraits and landscapes, and notably, a group of highly sensitive portraits of children from the nearby farms, orphanages and poorhouses.

In this painting Modersohn-Becker quietly and attentively captures the child’s intense, almost introspective concentration. The work displays sympathy with the subject and great formal simplicity. Her approach is in no way belittling and does not express sentimentality or arouse pity. Her handling of the subject is sincere, direct and unartificial, evincing a deep humanity for which she received scant recognition in her short lifetime due to her somewhat demure physical appearance and lack of pretention. A few days after the birth of her eagerly awaited daughter she died from an embolism in November 1907, aged only thirty-one.

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