Birkenstamm vor Baumlandschaft

Paula Modersohn-Becker

Birkenstamm vor Baumlandschaft

around 1903
Oil tempera on cardboard
23 1/4 x 13 5/8 inches (59 x 34,5 cm)


Our picture shows Modersohn-Becker's characteristic pictorial language: the thick birch trunk and the landscape are depicted only by a minimum of anatomical individual form, achieving that great simplicity which is her artistic concern. In the process, Modersohn's extraordinary feeling for the landscape and atmosphere as well as the secret poetry of things behind their outward appearance is revealed. In 1897, she wrote in her diary about the the birch - for which she harboured a particular fascination and which adorns more than seventy of her paintings as a motif: "[...].
Worpswede, Worpswede. You are always on my mind [...] Your birches, the delicate, slender youths that capture the eye. With that limp, dreamy grace, as if life had not yet dawned on them [...] Some are also already quite masculine, bold, with strong, straight gnarled trunks. These are my modern women"

Über Paula Modersohn-Becker

Born: 08.02.1876 in Dresden
Died: 20.11.1907 in Worpswede