"Considered one of the most important of the early German modernists, painter Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907) was the first woman artist to challenge centuries of traditional representations of the female body in art. She was the first to paint herself nude, as well as mothers and children nude. She also creted self-portraits while she was pregnant. Modersohn-Becker painted the life she was living as a woman and artist at the threshold of modernism, and paved the way for generations of women artists."--Book jacket.