Paula Modersohn-Becker was the most important female artist of her day and one of the main forerunners of Expressionism. She lived in Worpswede, in the fens north-east of Bremen in Germany. Little water-courses often dividing, a sand-dune set on the flat marsh, brown moorland, black canals – the power of the landscape is central to her work; it roused in her the faculty to see things as simple, big and monumental. ‘If one only could, one should write down the people and the landscape in a sign-language … the great simplicity of form, that is the wonder.’ Her diary, which became famous for the way it documented her development, is used for this film’s narration. ‘I feel how my work startles people. Still … it is the vividness with which one grasps the object which makes beauty in art.’