Paula Modersohn-Becker retrospective in Frankfurt
From 8 October 2021 to 6 February 2022, the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt is presenting a retrospective devoted to Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907), one of the most fascinating figures of the early Modernism.
Paula Modersohn-Becker - Selbstbildnis am 6 Hochzeitstag - 1906Paula Modersohn-Becker - Old Peasant Woman - 1905
Source: Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt. Image: Paula Modersohn-Becker, "Selbstbildnis am 6. Hochzeitstag" (Self-Portrait on the Sixth Wedding Day), 1906, 101.8 x 70.2 cm, Böttcherstraße Museums, Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum, Bremen ·· "Alte Bäuerin mit auf der Brust gekreuzten Händen" (Old Peasant Woman with Hands Crossed on Her Breast), 1907, Oil on canvas, 75.7 x 57.7 cm, Detroit Institute of Arts, Gift of Robert H. Tannahill.
Particularly notable among Modersohn-Becker's oeuvre are her self-portraits, as many historians consider her to be the first painter to portray herself nude (although it is likely that Artemisia Gentileschi used herself as a model for some of her mythological compositions that include female nudes). The beautiful and honest “Self-Portrait on the Sixth Day” sums up Modersohn-Becker's personal style, which straddled the line between Viennese Secession Modernism and the Expressionism that was beginning to predominate in her native Germany.
Showcasing 116 paintings and drawings from all phases of the artist's career, the Schirn Kunsthalle's retrospective is a fascinating tribute to an artist who, despite her short life, created an extensive and multifaceted body of work that includes more than 700 paintings and some 1,500 works on paper. The exhibition includes works from the artist's formative period -including a view from the painter's studio in Paris in 1900- to "Mother with Child in Her Arms, Half-Length Nude II", an expressive painting from 1907 that seems to foretell the artist's tragic death, which occurred a few weeks later due to a post-partum complication.
Another notable work in the exhibition is "Old Peasant Woman with Her Hands Crossed on Her Chest", which belongs to a series of pictures painted between 1903 and 1907 depicting women in asylums, which Modersohn-Becker portrays with almost monumental dignity. In the words of the Schirn Kunsthalle, the woman in this painting, "heavy, static, timeless, and with huge hands, she appears like a goddess from a distant pre-Christian culture".
Ingrid Pfeiffer, curator of the exhibition, stressed the enormous merit of Modersohn-Becker, an artist who created his entire oeuvre in less than ten years, including works which, in Pfeiffer's words, "were practically impossible to exhibit, because they would have overwhelmed her environment".

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