Lilly Engler

These rare documents chronicle the developing persona of the young woman Expressionist painter at the turn of the century, struggling to resolve the conflict between what she demanded of herself as an artist and what society expected of her as a married woman. Radycki provides an intriguing guide to the art capitals of Berlin, London, and Paris through the eyes of a woman studying art there and through contemporary sources that describe the artistic milieu and the status of women in 1900. We view the changing relationships between Becker and her friends, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, Clara Westhoff (the sculptor who married Rilke), and her husband, the painter Otto Modersohn. The letters begin when Becker is in art school and end within a month of her tragic death in 1907 at age thirty-one. The epilogue includes Rilke's intense "Requiem" of 1908, translated by Lilly Engler and Adrienne Rich and never before published and Rich's own moving "Paula Becker to Clara Westhoff."