CHICAGO, IL.- The Art Institute of Chicago announced Paula Modersohn-Becker: I Am Me, on view from October 12, 2024 through January 12, 2025. This exhibition marks Modersohn-Becker’s first museum retrospective in the United States. Showing the full range of her achievement over her career, the exhibition includes more than 50 paintings, 15 large-scale drawings, and five etchings.

Paula Modersohn-Becker charted her own path in turn-of-the-century Germany. Her frank portrayals of the bodily experiences of motherhood, pregnancy, youth, and old age introduced a bold perspective not often seen in early 20th-century art. The introspective Modersohn-Becker painted herself many times, including in the first nude self-portraits known to have been made by a woman.

“This exhibition is much anticipated and long overdue. It will allow visitors to see first-hand Modersohn-Becker’s forceful works of art, ones that have solidified her posthumous place as a feminist icon,” said Jay A. Clarke, Rothman Family Curator, Prints and Drawings. “The timeless images she created of young women in forest settings envisioned a deep affinity between the landscape and its occupants, viewing their identities as intimately intertwined. Her portraits, self-portraits, and figure paintings captured the inner essence of her subjects and depicted the female body frankly and knowingly.”

Modersohn-Becker’s innovative style, which emphasized expression over representation, placed her at the forefront of experimental art in Europe as she approached subjects such as figure drawing, landscape, still-life, and portraiture.

Together her works, and the exhibition’s title, which comes from one of Modersohn-Becker’s letters, show an artist deeply invested in both artistic and personal expression and self-determination.

Paula Modersohn-Becker: I Am Me is curated by the Art Institute of Chicago’s Jay A. Clarke, Rothman Family Curator, Prints and Drawings, and Jill Lloyd, independent scholar, Neue Galerie New York.