Paula Modersohn-Becker Self-Portrait Once Seized as ‘Degenerate’ Doubles Her Auction Record

A small, tightly focused self-portrait by German artist Paula Modersohn-Becker, who was long written out of art history but who has recently come in for renewed attention, made history at Berlin’s Grisebach auction house on Thursday. Selbstbildnis nach halblinks (Self-Portrait Looking Slightly Left), from 1906, measures just 10½ inches high, but fetched €1.3 million ($1.5 million) including fees, more than quintupling its low estimate, to sell to an unnamed private collector in