Paula Modersohn-Becker & Emil Nolde

8 FEB until 18 APR 2026

Celebrating Paula Modersohn-Becker!

Paula Modersohn-Becker is a major figure of the European avantgarde in the early 20th century. Preceeding expressionism, she created in her short lifetime (1876–1907) an important oeuvre handling the artistic concepts of form, space and colour in her very own way.

Born in Dresden in 1876, Modersohn-Becker followed the drawing and painting classes at “Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen” 1896–98. At the time, she produced many life-size drawings of figures and nudes some of them anticipating her later pictorial topics. With her move to Worpswede in 1898 she embarked on a path of artistic autonomy.

Four stays in Paris in 1900, 1903, 1905 and 1906/07 were pivotal to Modersohn-Becker’s artistic development. Her painting detached from a mere representation of nature increasingly putting a radical simplification of form in the centre of the pictorial conception.
Thus, she notes in 1903: “A great simplicity of form is something marvelous. As far back as I can remember, I have tried to put the simplicity of nature into the heads that I was painting or drawing.” Paula Modersohn-Becker, Journal, February 25, 1903, cit.: Busch/von Reinken: Paula Modersohn-Becker. The Letters and Journals, Evanston/Illinois 1990, p. 300.

On the occasion of the painter’s 150th birthday we present a masterpiece selection including all her artistic phases: early works from 1898/99, compositional sketches and large figure paintings executed in Worpswede as well as works done in Paris in 1906/07 like a late self-portrait executed in 1907.