Being Here

• An unconventional biography of the German expressionist painter Paula Modersohn-Becker by one of France's most acclaimed literary talents • Once overlooked by art historians, Modersohn-Becker was a bold and remarkable woman who challenged conventions both at home and in her art • In her characteristically elliptical, probing prose, Darrieussecq depicts a vivid portrait of Paula as a young woman and artist, her troubled marriage, ongoing struggles with poverty, the sense of conflict she felt between creativity and motherhood, and her tragic death at 31, just days after giving birth • Modersohn-Becker wrote hundreds of letters and maintained a diary throughout her short lifetime and Darrieussecq imbues Being Here with direct quotations from Paula's own writings • Today, Modersohn-Becker is widely recognised as the first female painter to paint female nudes, while she and fellow artists Picasso and Matisse are credited as having introduced the world to modernism in the early twentieth century • ‘Marie Darrieussecq reads the testament of Modersohn-Becker—the letters, the diaries, and above all the paintings—with a burning intelligence and a fierce hold on what it meant and means to be a woman and an artist.’ J. M. Coetzee