Seated Female Nude (Self-Portrait?)
Medium
charcoal with stumping
Dimensions
{"sheet":{"height":0.622,"width":0.339}}
Classification
Drawing
Department
Drawings
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
Accession Number
1973.35
Tags
female
About this artwork
Although Paula Modersohn-Becker died in 1907, just as the Expressionist groups in Dresden and Munich were forming, the themes of her work prefigure the movement. This likely self-portrait exhibits her desire to convey not the idealized appearance of the female body but rather its fundamental essence, stripped of all the world’s trappings. She distilled the human body into flattened forms—achieved by erasing and blending the charcoal—and abbreviated the delineation of the feet, hands, and face. T...