Being Here is Everything: The Life of Paula Modersohn-Becker by Marie Darrieussecq

The short, obscure, and prolific life of the German expressionist painter Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907), a significant figure in modernism.

First published in France in 2016, Being Here Is So Much traces the short, obscure, and prolific life of the German expressionist painter Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907). In a brief career, cut short by her death from an embolism at the age of thirty-one, shortly after she gave birth to a child, Modersohn-Becker trained in Germany, traveled often to Paris, developed close friendships with the sculptor Clara Westhoff and the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, and became one of her generation's preeminent artists, helping introduce modernity to the twentieth century alongside such other painters as Picasso and Matisse.

Marie Darrieussecq's triumphant and illuminating biography at once revives Modersohn-Becker's reputation as a significant figure in modernism and sheds light on the extreme difficulty women have faced in attaining recognition and establishing artistic careers.

Translated by Penny Hueston.

Marie Darrieussecq is one of the leading voices in contemporary French literature. Her first novel, Pig Tales, was a finalist for France's prestigious Prix Goncourt in 1996 and became an international bestseller. Her 2013 novel Men: A Novel of Cinema and Desire received the Prix Médicis, and her luminous, voluptuous portrait of the artist Paula Modersohn-Becker, Being Here Is Everything, was published in English by Semiotext(e) in 2017. Darrieussecq has also worked as a translator and a psychoanalyst.