1000 Museums

Paula Modersohn-Becker was a German artist with a distinctive style–which spanned Realism, Expressionism, and finally Fauvism–and even more striking subjects. She has gained recognition for her startling and almost unseemly depictions of women and children which disregarded the romanticized depictions of her male peers. These experimentations culminated in her self-portraits in which she often depicted herself nude; making her the first female artist to paint a nude self-portrait. In recent years, her work has garnered even more attention with the publication and translation of her letters which reveal the girlish and thrilling life behind her uncanny paintings. She has often been neglected in the rise of modernism because her work was before its time: both inspired by iconic painters of the period like Picasso and Matisse but also, potentially, an inspiration to these same artists.