Making Modernism in Imperial Germany

This is an in person event held at our Vernon Square campus. Booking will close 30 minutes before the event begins.

Bringing together leading academics in the field and coinciding with the major exhibition at the Royal Academy, this symposium will present new perspectives on artists living and working in Imperial Germany. Paula Modersohn-Becker, Käthe Kollwitz, Gabriele Münter, Marianne Werefkin and Ottilie Reylaender were professional artists at a time when the role of women was being questioned within society. Excluded from the main academies of art in Germany, they each found alternative routes to an artistic education and produced stylistically distinct responses to modernity which challenge conventional interpretations of Expressionism.

This event will explore the role of race, gender and conflict in relation to modernism and consider fresh approaches to the work of these women and other Expressionist artists who were active in Germany during the first few decades of the twentieth century.

Contributors:

Dorothy Price, The Courtauld

Natalia Sidlina, Tate Modern

Lynette Roth, Harvard University, Busch-Reisinger Museum

Nina Lübbren, Anglia Ruskin University

Deborah Lewer, University of Glasgow

Organised by Kellie-Ann Sabin (University of Nottingham) and Anne Grasselli (University of Edinburgh)

Image: Paula Modersohn-Becker, Portrait of an Italian Girl, 1906. Oil on board, 34 x 30.3cm. Private collection, on long-term loan to the Courtauld Gallery, London. (c) The Courtauld

Supported by the Tavolozza Foundation

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

The Courtauld Institute of Art, Lecture Theatre 2, London, United Kingdom