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The Art Institute of Chicago’s exhibition of works from German Expressionist painter, Paula Modersohn-Becker, is an intriguing exploration of the female body from a woman’s perspective.
Since painting continues to be a male-dominated field, the opportunity to look at a female painter’s body of work such as Remedias Varo’s surrealist paintings, which were featured in the museum last year, or the current exhibition of Becker’s work, is always appreciated.
Becker was a painter working at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century in Germany. She was known for her many self-portraits, her depictions of girls and women, often in the nude, and her experimental style. Becker experienced a tumultuous marriage with Otto Modersohn, later leaving him in 1906. During that time, she wrote to famed poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, about her desire to create a “new life” and discover who she was outside of her marriage. However, she later returned to her husband and died days after giving birth to their child in 1907.
Despite her short career, Becker was highly prolific. She took inspiration from Paul Cezanne, Auguste Rodin and Paul Gauguin, among others, but her work is distinct in style and perspective. Becker’s portraits often whittle the sitters down to their essence, using blocks of color and simplified shapes to evoke emotion in the viewer. The tone of many paintings is humorous, with a sense of fondness for the quirks of ordinary life. Her people and animals are intentionally misshapen, the children’s faces blurred to suggest a more generic image of childhood.
Her self-portraits (pictured above) range from sly to mysterious to provocative. The thickly layered paint of the central portrait is reminiscent of Van Gogh but her primary inspiration was Roman-Egyptian funerary paintings, which typically depict the deceased holding meaningful objects. Becker’s choice to keep her face in shadow against a light background lends the other two portraits an ethereal, even unsettling quality. In another half-length portrait, she depicts herself in the nude, with her hands placed around a rounded belly. The work is considered the first nude portrait by a woman artist, and it is neither erotic nor idealized in the manner of many male painters.
Paula-Modersohn-Becker-Stiftung, Bremen. © Paula-Modersohn-Becker-Stiftung, Bremen.
Becker was also influenced by fairytales, doing a series of etchings based on tales such as The Goosegirl. Another set of paintings depicting girls in woodland landscapes also has an eerie, fairytale-esque quality. A reverence and mysticism pervades Becker’s paintings of young girls and mothers, similar to paintings of the Madonna and Child. However, her depictions of the girls are imbued with strength and her portraits of nude mothers (see below) are quietly subversive. They are not modeled for the male gaze but complete in themselves.
With issues of women’s bodily autonomy at the forefront of our political discourse, the Art Institute’s exhibit is the perfect way to spend an afternoon and pay homage to a painter who embraced Modernism while finding a way to express her unique viewpoint.
The Paula Modersohn-Becker exhibit will be on display through January 12. The Art Institute of Chicago is located at 111 S. Michigan Ave, and is open Friday-Monday 11am-5pm, and Thursday 11-8pm. Closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
Images courtesy Art Institute of Chicago.