Girl with a Baby Among Birch Trees

Paula Modersohn-Becker devoted her work almost exclusively to images of women. Often depicting rustic German peasants, she deliberately chose an artistic style—intentionally simplified with rough brushwork and heavy contours—to evoke the lives of her subjects. Though celebrated today as an early pioneer of European modernism, Modersohn-Becker enjoyed no such recognition during her brief life. She died at age 31 having sold only a handful of paintings.

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