Author(s): Frank Laukötter

Art and Photography

When Paula Modersohn-Becker's artist friends examined her extensive estate a few weeks after her death in 1907, they were overwhelmed. Only gradually did they realize that in the painter, dead at thirty-one, they had had an outstanding artist in their midst. Today Modersohn-Becker is regarded as one of the pioneers of Expressionism.

Sculptor Bernhard Hoetger was one of the few people who recognized Modersohn-Becker's talent from an early stage. In 1920, he published a book collecting his memories of her, and they are reproduced as facsimile here. In addition to Hoetger's writings, the book offers an essay tracing Modersohn-Becker's life and work from a present-day perspective, together with a traditional biographical sketch and reproductions of forty of her most important works.