19-NEW Art and Audacity: Women in Modernism c.1905–1925

Course 19 – Summer School on Campus

Monday 6 – Friday 10 July 2026

Dr Emily Christensen

£695

Course Description:

In the first decades of the twentieth century, women artists across Europe redefined what it meant to be modern. This course explores how they engaged with radical new ideas about art, gender, and society at a moment of extraordinary upheaval. From Hilma af Klint’s spiritual abstraction and Valentine de Saint-Point’s provocative Manifesto of the Futurist Woman to the innovative work of Natalia Goncharova and Hannah Höch, we will examine how women artists claimed a place within – and against – the avant-garde. Through close study of paintings, manifestos, performances and early film, participants will encounter a vivid network of women whose contributions helped to reshape modern art.

We will consider how these artists challenged the boundaries of ‘appropriate’ female creativity, experimented with new media from photomontage to cinema, and negotiated the politics of sexuality, maternity, and modern labour. Case studies will range from Paula Modersohn-Becker’s depictions of the female body to the brash independence of Jeanne Mammen’s ‘New Woman’ and the daring persona of Luisa Casati. Sessions include lectures, group discussions, hands-on study of period journals, and visits to the Prints and Drawings Room at the Courtauld and the British Museum. The course invites participants to rediscover the early avant-garde through the lens of women; as Gertrude Stein famously wrote, “One must dare to be modern. Women must dare twice.”