Women artists have always struggled to maintain an art practice as the primary focus of their lives. Going it alone, they’ve needed to contrive ways to survive, or accept that with commitment to a human “other” comes domestic concerns – and very likely, the demands of motherhood.
Some, such as the German expressionist painter Paula Modersohn-Becker, have even died in the attempt. Having left her husband to pursue her career in Paris, on being persuaded to return to him, Modersohn-Becker became pregnant and died 20 days after giving birth to her first child: she was 31.
