Making Modernism at Royal Academy: Review

When walking into an exhibition of female figurative paintings and drawings, an art history dominated by men has conditioned us to expect female figures to be looked at. Not the self-confident portraits and self-portraits in this exhibition, which seem to say to the visitor ‘what are you looking at?’.


Making Modernism is an exhibition of works by seven female artists working in the early 1900s in Germany, whose contribution to the Modernist movement has been largely overlooked - and this exhibition is celebrating their works.


Visitors are immediately greeted by a fantastic portrait of author and musician Anna Roslund by Gabriele Munter. Roslund is leaning back with a pipe in her mouth and appears as if she’s deep in thought and we’re the ones intruding on her contemplative moment.


The stars of the show are Kathe Kollwitz’s drawings. Self-portraits on the same wall were drawn when she was a young and then older woman - a fresh face may have been exchanged for wrinkles but her self-assuredness in style and facial expression are plain to see in both works.


One gallery of the show is dedicated to intimacy, and once again Kollwitz’s drawings shine with adjacent works displaying a tender couple embracing and snugly fitting into one another and then an adjacent couple with arched backs in the throes of love-making. The style of drawing is similar but the energy in both works is completely different, yet she encapsulates the emotions beautifully within each piece.


While Kollwitz and Munter are the two stronger artists, there are also some great works by the others in this exhibition. Ottilie Reylaender’s naked young girl in an oversized chair captures her sitters' vulnerability and Jacoba van Heemskerck’s abstract works stand out for being radically different to the largely figurative works by the other artist in this exhibition.


Those looking up Modernism in art history will be confronted by largely male artists and this exhibition brings to light some of the impressive female artists who were working at that time and deserve recognition for their works. Not every work here is a knockout, and the grouping of these seven artists is a little loose, but it’s an important show that will bring new audiences to discover artists they weren’t familiar with.


Making Modernism: Paula Modersohn-Becker, Käthe Kollwitz, Gabriele Münter and Marianne Werefkin at Royal Academy of Arts. 12 November - 12 February, £17-19.