The picturesque Böttcherstraße in the heart of Hanseatic Bremen is widely known for its ornamental brick architecture. The Kunstsammlungen Böttcherstraße (Böttcherstraße Art Collections) form the architectural and cultural highlights of this unique ensemble. They include the Museum im Roselius-Haus, a patrician house dating from the 16th century, and the Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum, a visionary building by the sculptor, architect and artisan Bernhard Hoetger.

The Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum is the first museum in the world dedicated to a female painter. Major works illustrate the outstanding position Paula Modersohn-Becker has attained as a pioneer of modern art. The museum was built by order of the merchant and patron Ludwig Roselius who had collected a considerable number of her works.
The architect Bernhard Hoetger built a unique building that was opened as a museum in 1927. The house is one of the most significant examples of expressionist architecture in Germany. The collection was bought by the City of Bremen and the Federal Republic of Germany in 1988. It was completed with the assets of the Paula Modersohn-Becker-Foundation which the artist’s daughter Mathilde founded in 1978. In 1994, the Sparkasse Bremen invested in the restoration and extension of the museum. Today, it gives an overview of all the artist’s working phases. The museum also contains the largest collection of works by Hoetger; from the period in which he was still influenced by Rodin, until his later more independent works. Since May 2005 the museum has displayed Jenny Holzer’s work »For Paula Modersohn-Becker.«

Paula Modersohn-Becker was born in Dresden in 1876. In 1888 she moved to Bremen with her family. After having studied to become a teacher, she enrolled in a painting and drawing academy in Berlin. In 1898 she moved to Worpswede, a village north of Bremen, and continued her studies with Fritz Mackensen, the founder of the Worpswede Artists’ Colony. Here, she met Heinrich Vogeler, Clara Westhoff, Rainer Maria Rilke and Otto Modersohn, who in 1901 became her husband. In 1900 she paid her first visit to Paris. Further stays led her to a new, distinctive and monumental style of painting. She was especially influenced by the works of Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin and Les Nabis. However, she was also fascinated by antiquity and the pieces by the Old Masters in the Louvre. From February 1906 until March 1907, Paula Modersohn-Becker lived in Paris. Returning to Worpswede she died in November 1907 after having given birth to her daughter.
Paula Modersohn-Becker is a pioneer of modern art in Europe. Her late paintings in particular show the artist’s work as exhibiting a poignant simplicity and a nuance of surface. By means of relief-like modelling and scratching she gives a new kind of structure to colour. Early in her career she found her own distinctive manner of representing Worpswede landscape. The intense colours of the still lifes she created since 1904 stand out. Rainer Maria Rilke mentioned them in his requiem: »the full fruits / you put in bowls in front of you / and counteracted their weight in colour.« For her portraits and figures she mainly used children, old women and peasant women as subject matter. As in her landscapes, she abandoned all genre-like idealistic design and found a language for her portraits that expresses the essential character of her sitter.

The Roselius-Haus is the historic centre of the Böttcherstraße (Cooper’s Street). It was built in Renaissance style in 1588. The inventor of decaffeinated coffee and founder of Kaffee HAG, Ludwig Roselius (1874–1943), bought the house in 1902 and became committed to restoring the Böttcherstraße.
He had the house renovated according to his ideal of a medieval middle-class house in 1907/1908, and embellished it with gables in 1927/1928. In 1928 he opened the Museum im Roselius-Haus and made his precious collection of North European art and craftwork accessible to the public. Still shown today, the collection is in keeping with Roselius’ intention of displaying exquisite furniture, carpets, wallpaper, art and craft, that together create an atmosphere of the North German upper middle class way of life. Precious works of art complete the ensemble and invite the visitor to tour the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque times. Highlights of the collection are sculptures and a group of medieval altars that are unique in Bremen, paintings by Ludger tom Ring and Lucas Cranach the Elder and a sculpture by Tilmann Riemenscheider. The historic silver treasure of the »Compagnie der Schwarzen Häupter aus Riga« has been on permanent loan to the museum since 1987

Böttcherstraße Art Collections
Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum
Museum im Roselius-Haus
Böttcherstraße 6–10 • 28195 Bremen
Germany

Phone +49 (0) 4 21-  33 88 222
Fax +49 (0) 4 21- 33 88 233
www.pmbm.de • info@pmbm.de

Getting there by public transportation:
Tram 4, 6 and 8 to »Domsheide«

Admission:
€ 5.00, reduced: € 3.00,
free for children under 7 years of age,
Groups (10 persons and more):
€ 3.00 per person,
School classes: € 1.50 per pupil

Opening hours:
Tue –Sun 11 am – 6 pm

Tours:
Public guided tours: Sundays 11.30 am
To book a tour please call
Phone +49 (0) 4 21- 33 88 222