German Painter Paula Modersohn-Becker Is Being Celebrated With a Google Doodle. Here's Why
self-portrait didn’t care much for
the traditional expectations or
institutions that constrained most
European women at the turn of
the 20th century. Paula Modersohn-Becker’s parents wanted her to become a teacher , and told her to abandon her “egotism” in order to carry out her wifely duties; instead, she became one of the era’s most prolific artists, and helped give rise to the modernist movement alongside Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. On what would have been Paula Modersohn-Becker’s 142nd birthday, Google is celebrating the under-appreciated German artist with a Doodle. Modersohn-Becker sold just three paintings, but she pursued her work with a ferocity fueled by a sense that she had “lost” the first two decades of her life. At the age of 18, she defied her parents to join an artist colony in Worpswede, in northern Germany. There, she met her future husband, the older, respected artist Otto Modersohn.
moved to Paris, and encouraged
Modersohn to join her. The two got engaged, at which point Modersohn-Becker ‘s family intervened and sent her to a cooking school in preparation for her coming marriage. But she refused to put aside her ambitions and paint brushes, and boldly declared she “ was going to become somebody “. Her works often featured regular women, frequently painted nude, as they slept, breastfed and gardened.
In 1906 alone, the prolific artist painted 80 pictures. She died later the following year of an embolism, 18 days after giving birth to her daughter at the age of 31. The literal fruits of Modersohn-Becker’s labor — she painted pumpkins, cherries and lemons — were commemorated by her friend, the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, in his ode to her , “Requiem for a Friend.”
Google’s Doodle for Modersohn-
Becker was created by Golden Cosmos , a Berlin-based artduo.
The illustration features
Modersohn-Becker at work, brush
and flowers in hand, with four
completed works behind her.
