1876 Dresden-Friedrichstadt
1907 Worpswede

Paula Modersohn-Becker was born in Dresden on February, 8. 1876, two years later, the family moved to Bremen. In 1892, she received her first drawing-lessons during a seven-month stay with her father's sister in England. Back in Bremen, she attended the teacher's class at her parent's urging, at the same time, she was taught drawing and painting by the artist Bernhardt Wiegant from Bremen. In 1895, artists from Worpswede exhibited at the 'Kunsthalle' Bremen for the first time. In 1896, Paula Modersohn-Becker attended a course of the 'Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen', which fell into line with an apprenticeship of one and a half year. Drawing-lessons with portrait and nude studies were in the foreground at first, later she attended Jeanne Bauck's painting class. In the summer 1897, she stayed in Worpswede for the first time and socialised with Fritz Mackensen, who became her teacher. The final move to Worpswede followed in the autumn of 1898. Between 1900 and 1907, Paula Modersohn-Becker travelled to Paris several times, where she studied during longer stays at the Academy Colarossi and the Ecole des Beaux Arts and socialised with the artistic avant-garde. She was especially influenced by Cézanne and Gauguin, whose immense importance she recognized as one of the first artists in Germany. In 1901, the painter married Otto Modersohn, whom she got to know in Worpswede in 1897. In November 1907, their daughter was born. The same month, Paula Modersohn-Becker died of cardioplegia. Emanating from the expressive nature-lyrism of the turn of the century, the artist arrived with her pictures of rural women and children, in selfportraits and still lifes at expressive, large-sized and colour-expressive painting, which made her a precursor of German Expressionism.