Warfare of Art & Law Podcast
Warfare of Art and Law Podcast sparks conversation about the intriguing – and sometimes infuriating – stories that arise in the worlds of art and law with artist and attorney Stephanie Drawdy.
Warfare of Art & Law Podcast
Art Historian Silvia Wistuba on the ‘Malweiber’ - Female Artists of German Modernism
To learn more about Silvia Wistuba and her work, please visit here and here.
Cover Image: Wistuba's adaptation of work by artist Julie Wolfthorn for the cover of Jugend magazine (1898).
Show Notes
0:00 Silvia Wistuba on equality of artists
1:15 Wistuba’s background
2:30 Gabriele Münter
4:30 ‘Malweiber’ meaning
6:00 timeframe of ‘Malweiber’ labeling – 1871-1918
8:30 research process
12:00 regional approach to research
15:00 twelve female artists focused on in research
16:30 finding that art is not gendered
18:15 Charlotte Corinth
21:30 Dora Hitz
22:40 Maria Slavona
24:25 Augusta von Zitzewitz
25:20 Erma Bossi
26:25 Elisabeth Epstein
27:23 Maria Franck-Marc
30:30 Gabriele Münter
32:25 Elisabeth Erdmann-Macke
34:25 Ida Gerhardi
36:30 Fifi Kreutzer
37:55 Olga Openheimer
40:30 range of resources
43:30 Blue Rider Group
45:30 Gabriele Münter’s donation to Lenbachhaus (Munich)
49:00 Museum Art of the Lost Generation
51:30 current relevance
53:30 need for discourse on art’s social context
55:08 social justice for artists of the past
55:20 defining justice as respect shown to all
56:25 feedback
58:10 challenging the sexist paradigm that art is gendered
59:40 plans to convert thesis into book
1:00:15 derogatory nature of term ‘Malweiber’
1:01:45 cover image inspired by Julie Wolfthorn’s image
Please share your comments and/or questions at stephanie@warfareofartandlaw.com
Music by Toulme.
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Thanks so much for listening!
© Stephanie Drawdy [2025]
I believe, as an art historian, it's sort of my duty, in a way, to do this, to make the public understand that there are female artists out there who are just as good as male artists. There's no distinction, there's no marginalization.
Speaker 2:We're all the same marginalization, we're all the same. Welcome to Warfare of Art and Law, the podcast that focuses on how justice does or doesn't play out when art and law overlap. Hi everyone, it's Stephanie, and that was art historian Sylvia Westubud. What follows is a conversation with Sylvia where she discusses female artists from German modernism and the derogatory term that was used to label these female artists Mollweiber, Sylvia Wastuba. Welcome to Warfare of Art and Law. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Speaker 1:Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. Would you give an overview of your background, your work and what brought you to focus on the Malweiber?
Speaker 1:Of course. Well, I was born in Australia of German parents, so my first language was German, and this is where I have the relationship with Germany, even though I wasn't born there, and I've always been interested in art. But somehow life always got in the way until 2011 to 2012, when I went into art school and that seemed to just open my eyes to a different world because I was introduced to different genres and movements and I really became interested in art history. So to further that because I wasn't going to set the world on fire with my art, to further my knowledge, I decided well, let's go to university.
Speaker 1:So I enrolled as a mature age student, completed my Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Art History with a distinction, and then I went on to do my honours, where I was awarded first class and the honours subject was Gabrielle Mentor and the Modern World, and it was about the artist Gabrielle Mentor, who is better known as Vasily Kandinsky's muse, lover, girlfriend, rather than an artist in her own right. So, researching her, I discovered the term Moldeba, which then opened my eyes to the injustice that these artists were faced with and I thought I have to write about these women. Artists in the past don't have voices. So I thought, as an art historian, that's what I need to do. I need to explain to the world what they did and what they achieved. So that brought me to doing my PhD, which is called Malweiber the Artists of German Modernism. So that's where we are at the moment.
Speaker 2:I just think it's so interesting that you ran across that term and then you were inspired by it. I too ran across that term and was so intrigued by this, like I'd already known that these women had faced such challenges in their era. But then to know that there was a term around it. So I wonder, maybe if we just start with the term and what your research unfolded with that, and then wherever you want to take us, yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1:Yes, well, I do need to explain the term Malweber. So if I translate it, it is Mal is to paint and Weber is a woman, but it's the familiar term of woman In Imperial Germany where this thesis is set. At that time it was very conservative and perhaps it still is a little bit in Germany at the moment, in that if you speak to a woman, you and a man, you use the unfamiliar or the polite term, whereas Weber is similar to I don't know what it would be in American, but in Australia we would say Sheila's. It's a derogatory term and at that time it was actually a swear word. So it was aimed originally at dilettantes, amateur painters who were just filling in time before they got married.
Speaker 1:But then there came the serious women artists who wanted to make a career out of this. Men saw them as competition coming into their art world. So they kept going with this derogatory phrase to try and put them down in any way possible. And this was covered also in media, in satirical journals, in novels, in books, always this reference back to Malvava, linking her with a third sex. And it was such a put down term that these women, that was another challenge. They had to struggle past that, as well as many other obstacles which we can discuss later if you wish.
Speaker 2:And if you would kind of give a. You've kind of mentioned this is Imperial Germany, so what's the timeframe we're in?
Speaker 1:Yep timeframe is 1871 to 1918, sorry, at the end of World War I and that was a time of great unsettling. I suppose that conservative Germany moving into modernism changes with electricity, with the women's movement. There was all sorts of factors involved in that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so 1918, do you see where after that point I mean, there's a lot going on the Bauhaus and lots of different doors opening for women, even though they're still kind of closed in many ways. Once you got in the institution, like the Bauhaus, for example, like what classes you could or couldn't take, so does that term kind of uh, fall out of vogue? Uh, not that women ever thought it was in vogue, but like as the use by men. Did it fall out around 1918 or did you see it lingering?
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, my research has shown that, like everything changed with World War I, even the type of art that was being produced was much more joyful and adventurous, whereas art created after World War I tended to be more sombre and some of it was disturbing, as in German expressionism the second stage but because female artists were actually forbidden to enter art academies until 1920. That then was when the changes began and the term was not really used after that.
Speaker 2:What was the research process for you? So you're in Australia. Did you do this online or were you going into archives? How did that work?
Speaker 1:yeah, well, that was a bit disappointing for me because I started this in 2020, um, just when COVID hit and I had planned to go to Germany to do research. So, uh, of course, with the shutdown, it was very, very difficult for me. I had to do everything online. Even some texts like hard copy texts from international libraries I couldn't get because libraries didn't want to send anything out in case it never came back again, which was the case, I believe, in a lot of circumstances. So, yes, mostly online. It was difficult to research a lot of archival things, but I did my best with what I got and because of that, I also had to change my strategy as I was researching and evolved the thesis from the information that I could actually find.
Speaker 2:What was the shift then, and how did that impact the final product of your thesis?
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, what I did with my research strategy was to try and find as many names as I could of female artists. That was the first thing I had to do. The final count and this is by no means complete is 1,134 names. So I had to access every dictionary lexicon that I could possibly find and go through each individual entry to see if that artist was active in Germany or born in Germany, and then take it from there. So from that lot of names, I had to then do a long list, then a short list and then the final 12 artists that I've chosen.
Speaker 1:And again, all of this was how much information could I find on them? So that was what it boiled down to. If I could get sufficient information, I could view their artworks, then I could talk about them. So I've got a final 12, and the direction it's taken is that I've regionalised the artists, because in Germany that time there were main centres, artistic centres of Berlin, munich and the Rhineland, which encompassed Dusseldorf and Cologne, and regionalising the artists has also sort of made very important what type of art they did, what genre. They weren't really involved in movements, but there was impressionism and expressionism involved.
Speaker 2:So, depending on which of those three regions, you saw a specific genre emerging. How did that work between the three?
Speaker 1:Well, funnily enough, berlin, because it was much more traditional, realist, and then it became impressionist. There was problems where the male artists were starting to succeed from the art academies to form their own groups and movements, the successions where they could do their own style without being forced to do traditional art. So from there developed Impressionism, and it was not French Impressionism, obviously it was German, which was slightly different. It was still en plein air, but it was perhaps not quite as light-filled as what the French was. French Impressionism was, whereas Munich was different because it had a lot of Russian immigrants and people from other nations, even from America, who brought with them new ideas and vibes. And this is where a lot of experimentation took place in Munich, and that's what I would call the centre of expressionism, because there was a looseness there. There was more opportunities for women to get private tuition, art training there, because they couldn't enter the academies, and it was like it was actually called the Paris of Germany Munich, like what was actually called the Paris of Germany in Munich. So it had that bohemian lifestyle that is sometimes what an artist needs to be creative.
Speaker 1:Now the Rhineland, if I finish off with the three regions, was again rather expressionistic, but it took it one step further with the theme of Gesamtkunstwerk, which is like the art of life, you know, art being life, or incorporating art with life. And they would move more towards textiles, utilitarian objects that were still works of art, utilitarian objects that were still works of art. And because of their proximity to France, they were very much inspired, I'd say, rather than influenced, by what was happening there. So they were also making leaps and bounds in going forward with modernism. So the women artists had these three regions to go to, but many had the opportunities to also go to Paris.
Speaker 2:So you said you started with just over 1,000. Was it 1,034,? You said yeah, and then you narrow it down to 12. So what were the criteria? And my first thought is how difficult it was to find the art by these women like any images that still existed. So was that your biggest criteria, or how did that work?
Speaker 1:It was mainly finding information about their education and what sort of art they were doing. Did they contribute to German modernism? That was the main criteria. How did they contribute? In which way? How did they contribute, uh, in which way that? Was there some new technique that they created? Uh, were they at all? God, were they experimenting? But yes, the crux was, um, did they contribute? And obviously, was there artworks available for me to analyse? Because in my thesis, that's exactly what I do. I show their artworks on their merit and actually compare them with male artists of the same era, and part of the thesis is that art is not gendered so you saw equal talent and skill.
Speaker 2:It was equal, it was equal?
Speaker 1:yeah, it was equal. And that's what was amazing for me to think that, yes, they've contributed, but why are they unknown now or little known? You know, in the art world we may remember Paula Mollison-Becker or Katja Kollwitz, but nobody remembers Augusta von Zitzewitz or Maria Sloana, or even Charlotte Berend-Corinth, who was the wife of Lovis Corinth, especially the ones that were married to artists. You don't hear about them, you only hear that they're the artist's wife. But they were on a level playing field. But they were on a level playing field, and this is what my thesis hopes to expose.
Speaker 2:And I applaud you for that. Thank you for doing this work. I love and just want to hear more, so tell me if you would. Could you break down perhaps a little as much as you care to share, like a capsule about each of the 12 that you chose and you've kind of already alluded to a few of them, referencing them just now but maybe just give a taste for each artist's work and what they contributed that you found so compelling? I'd love to do that, but how much time have we got you found so compelling?
Speaker 1:I'd love to do that. But how much time have we got? I've got as much time as you need. Okay, there's 12. As we said, I've regionalized them.
Speaker 1:So if I start off with Berlin, charlotte Berendt-Korinth was married to the German impressionist Lovis Korinth Now. She met him at a very young age. He's about 30 years older than her. She actually was a student at his private art school and he became enamoured with her and over her lifetime his lifetime, sorry he painted over 80 paintings of her. So she was his muse as well. But she was also a very talented artist and that's why I'm thinking he might have married her, because she was competition. But she had family. She still had to bring up children, found time for her art, but she did her own own thing rather than just go the straight line of impressionism like her husband was doing. She broached taboo subjects for that time.
Speaker 1:She was the first artist, male or female, to actually depict childbirth in a painting, and it was not this Madonna type, it was the gritty. It was called Der Schwere Stunde, the Difficult Hour of Childbirth, and unfortunately this painting was destroyed in World War II and there's just a photograph of it that survives and two oil studies. But for her to do a subject like that and actually exhibit it. I've found well that that's very inventive. That's part of German modernism breaking the boundaries and trying new things. And this is what she did. She also, um, did graphics, lithograph graphic prints of um? Um the theater people, um, erotic dancers. She did some very erotic naked photos, or semi-naked photos, sorry, graphics. And again, that's not what women were supposed to be painting or creating art about. But she was doing it with a female gaze, not a male gaze, and that is the big difference. However, she ended up devoting her final years after the husband died, in writing memoirs about her life with him, and she organised his catalogue, raison, and organised exhibitions and just put all her life into his memory. So that is also another contribution to modernism, because the world wouldn't know so much about her husband if she didn't do that, charlotte.
Speaker 1:The next one, dora Hitz. She's an older artist who was able to get good training in the days when there were academies open for women. Most academies closed for women in 1879. So she had training. She was actually asked to illustrate a book for the Queen of Romania and these illustrations the Queen then wanted painted as murals in her palace, which she also did. But the good thing with Dora is she was true to Germany and she tried to get involved with many groups and successions to help women to be able to exhibit. So not only was she an excellent artist herself in the forefront of Impressionism, but she was there to help other women.
Speaker 1:Maria Slavona she's got a very sad tale, actually very talented made her way from Berlin to to Munich, then to Paris, and in Paris she led a very unusual bohemian lifestyle. Two women and three men shared an apartment in Paris and she fell pregnant to one of the men and he left her soon after. So if you can imagine, in 1891, I think, the child was born being a single mother in Paris, unmarried. She's got no money. She has to try and support herself. So she's trying to sell paintings in an art market that favours men. So she signs her name, mostly just her surname, so her work is virtually anonymous, which is a real shame. Anyway, as fortune had it, she managed to marry well enough to go back to Germany, because she couldn't go back with a child unmarried. She came back to Germany and was lauded for her wonderful impersonism and there are many of her paintings in galleries in Germany at the moment, which I'm really happy about, and they're actually on display, which is good. Excuse me, augusta von Zisterwitz she's another Impressionist. She was famous for portraiture and she was in society. She painted a lot of society people and also there in galleries. She was also writing in magazines and her portraits that she did of the society people appeared in these society magazines, so at the time she was well known in her lifetime.
Speaker 1:Now, if we go to Munich, as I said, munich was the avant-garde and we have a lot of I have two artists there that weren't German-born but they were active in Germany, and the first one's Irma Bossi. She was born in what is now Croatia, was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and she did the breakthrough into Expressionism, and her work is very colourful, very similar to the male artists of Expressionism, such as Auguste Marquis and Franz Marc and also Vasily Kandinsky, and if you do put their images side by side they are equal. Again, not much is known about her. That's probably her own fault, because she didn't keep proper records. She actually lied about her age, trying to make herself younger sometimes, but I managed to find quite a bit of information about her, which is good. Elizabeth Epstein she was also similar to Irma Bossi. She broke through to Expressionism but she spent a lot of time in France so she also had a bit of Fauvism in her works because she was very familiar with Matisse being in France. She had a good network set up there and she also contributed to the Blue Rider group in Munich, which I also explain in my thesis. She introduced Robert Delaney to Vasilija Kandinsky and he became part of their exhibitions and the group. And again, that wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for Elizabeth Epstein.
Speaker 1:Maria Frank-Marc is a very sad, has a very sad story, has a very sad story. She was from middle caste background with very strict parents who wanted to see her well-married. She wanted to do art. She went to art school and she actually studied and became an art teacher to teach in high schools. But she wanted to further herself in her career. So she ended up going to Munich and she met by chance the painter Franz Marc and fell in love. But it was a very torrid relationship and he ended up marrying someone else. Even though he said he professed his love to her. Her parents would always bring her back to Berlin. She went down to Munich. Again. It was a sad, sorry thing that he married someone else, then left this woman. He and Maria lived in sin, which was really a bad thing to do in that era, until his divorce was finally settled a few years later and they could then eventually marry. They had a wonderful relationship, by her memoirs, and even though she actually had more art training than he, she did take advice from him.
Speaker 1:In certain ways their works seem very similar. I don't think one influenced the other. I don't believe in that sort of influence because it's your work. You do what you want to do if you're an artist. But unfortunately he was killed in World War I in action and she never painted again. After that she spent her life again cataloguing all his works, promoting him in exhibitions, in books, speaking with authors about, doing biographies and again putting him within the art historical canon for in perpetuity, whereas her work has never been seen. So she ended up going to the Bauhaus in the 20s and 30s and she learnt weaving and that's what she did for the rest of her life. But it's very sad that she never painted again. She had some beautiful, very expressive paintings and then, lastly, in Munich, is Gabrielle Munter my favourite. And then, lastly, in Munich, is Gabrielle Munter, my favourite, simply because she strove so hard to make the breakthrough and she actually invented her own style of painting, her own technique of painting, where she simplified forms and she actually created form with colour and then put a black outline around it and while it might look naive, it was an actual breakthrough in modernism.
Speaker 1:Her works for me are very important. Her works for me are very important. Her contribution to modernism, as they were a social and cultural commentary. She was an outcast because she lived with Vasily Kandinsky without being married, so she was not accepted in polite society. She only had a very tight circle of friends, so her paintings were often studies of society within her own realm and that speaks a lot for how women were treated as being on the outer, even though she was part of the Blue Rider group. If they had meetings the male artists would be together and the female artists would be on the outer. She created the most important contribution, I believe. The most important contribution, I believe, and I look forward to showing all her works in my thesis.
Speaker 1:The Rhineland, as I've said, was a region of progress and I've got four artists here who contributed in different ways. There was Elizabeth Edmund Mackey, who was wife of August Mackey, who was also a German expressionist. He also was killed in action in World War I and during his lifetime she was also his muse. He painted very I can't remember now but it was over 100 paintings of her. But the Gesamtkunstwerk of this art and life was something that involved the whole family, something that involved the whole family. So Elizabeth was not only muse to her husband, she also, from his designs, created embroideries, created tapestries that would be used to cover furniture, to be put on tabletops. All these tactile things she did, but no one knows she did it. So that for me also is not right. She needs to be acknowledged here for the work that she's done and, again, similar to Maria Frank-Marc, when her husband, auguste, died, she also wrote books, memoirs, her life with him catalogued his works, made sure that there were exhibitions there for his name to be known, but in the process her name wasn't known. So again, this is her great contribution.
Speaker 1:Ida Guhardi was a single woman who didn't. Heidi was a single woman who didn't have the great family fortune that most of the others did. So she needed to get a patron to help her be educated, and she did go to Paris and stayed there for many years and in Paris, like most of these artists, when they went there they opened up because it was a different environment and she was a very good portraitist. But she had to do it for money, to survive and, as an artist, I think, stephanie, you can appreciate this as well. If you're forced to do something creative but it's not your style of creation, you become a little bit frustrated and you want to do what you want to do. So she would go out and quickly sketch the Parisian nightlife. She'd go to these dance halls and bars, places where women weren't supposed to go, places where women weren't supposed to go or proper women weren't supposed to go on their own, and she would sketch the characters there, similar to what Dagar used to do Go into these places and just watch people watch and just watch people watch. So she did beautiful coloured paintings of these nightlives which weren't accepted back in Germany because it was regarded as being too French. And she would try to sell her works to even the gallery in the town where she was born and she was so upset she wrote in memoirs does an artist have to die before the gallery will buy their paintings? You know, like, as it turned out, they did buy it after her death.
Speaker 1:Fifi Kreutzer is the youngest artist. She was also married to an artist and she did many mediums of painting drawings. She did a lot of ink and watercolour drawings. Again, I've compared her with her husband and with others in that era, male and females, and they're equal. She's made that contribution. But one of her finest works was an embroidered painting called the Dragonslayer and it was based on, you know, st George and the Dragon or Siegfried. The Dragonslayer is a tale, a folk tale in Germany, and this was a triptych that was quite large, over a metre wide, and it was telling the story, the folk tale, but instead of painting she's embroidered it and it is an outstanding work. I've never seen anything like it. I also have photos of that in my thesis and that's something that had never been done and I consider that a very good contribution.
Speaker 1:And my final artist, olga Oppenheimer, again, is not really known. She was also a painter and graphic artist but her major contribution to modernism was that she fortunately she had the funds she created this club of sorts and it was called the Gerons Club. It was a meeting space, it was an exhibition space. She held seminars space um, she held seminars, she organized artists from france to come um and exhibit there, and, and really she was at the forefront of bringing french art to german audiences. Again, that was the proximity I was explaining that cologne very close to France, so she could do all of this. She still created her own art, yes, but I think this work was more important.
Speaker 1:Unfortunately, world War I came, her brother was killed in action. She had a mental and nervous breakdown, didn't paint again and unfortunately ended up in a mental and nervous breakdown. Didn't paint again and unfortunately ended up in a mental asylum until the National Socialists came in and took her off and she was murdered. But all of them, all my 12 artists, have done solid contributions and this is what I want to explain Give them the voice that they didn't have now in the 21st century. And I've created, just going a bit further, to tighten this up. In my research, I researched as many exhibitions as I could on each artist and I've created a spreadsheet which I've attached as annexures to my thesis. My reason for doing this is that if there's any other scholars that want to pick up on this, at least they've got the information and perhaps with archival research within Germany or something they may be able to do, further research on the artists. Unfortunately, I can only just limit in my thesis what I've actually said to you.
Speaker 2:The different available resources that you culled from. You've mentioned memoir once or maybe twice, and then the exhibition information. Perhaps there were exhibition pamphlets, things like that, like diaries. I was just curious, like the range of sources that you had to go through to pull this information.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's exactly right. A lot of the exhibition catalogs, fortunately, have been digitized. I was able to locate some of those Others. I managed to get hard copies from libraries. Actually, talking of exhibition catalogues, that seems to be the only scholarly work where I've discovered these artists. There's never actually been monologues, written or journal articles about these artists, it's just essays within exhibition catalogues. And I'm talking about now in the 21st century as well. But yes, I had to cover through those archival records. Wikipedia was a good source. That was my beginning source, but of course that's not scholarly. But it gave me names, it gave me a direction to follow and quite often I would find information through their husbands if they were married to an artist. But yes, it was difficult at times. So that's what I'm saying I could only work with what information I could find what were the.
Speaker 2:Did you find certain websites that were especially helpful, and you have the advantage of speaking German, so that was not an issue for you. So were a lot of. Whatever sites you found, were they mostly in German or had there been translations that you ran across?
Speaker 1:no, not many translations. Um, obviously Wikipedia will will give you the translated. It's in German and English, but the archival records are in German. So there were sites, or there are sites of artists, women, artists, associations that have records going back to when they first started 1860s I think it was. That's all in german, the archival texts in german, so really there's not much in the english-speaking language that you can find on the male libel.
Speaker 2:You referenced how the Blue Rider group functioned. I was curious about just for a moment that how did you learn the way they excluded women or kept them on the outside, as you said, I believe?
Speaker 1:Again from notes and diary notes. Women were more inclined to write diaries and notes and poetry, whereas men tended to write books. And it's within those diary notes or memoirs that the women open up and they explain how things really are. So I've got um notes from several of the women in the Blue Rider group and they do explain the dynamics of the group and how the men were always in charge and the women were doing the menial chores. Like Luria, frank was known for the best coffee. She made the best coffee at their meetings.
Speaker 2:I'm just kind of surprised. When you actually come across a diary and it has that kind of information, I just feel like you found a goldmine and wonderful that they I mean not that that's good information, that they were known for that as opposed to their work but the fact that the diary survived, especially like two wars, and their lack of notoriety, like that's that they didn't get pitched in the bin, like that's just amazing to me. Did you feel that way when you would run across them?
Speaker 1:Definitely, especially with Gabrielle Mentor. She kept a lot of things. She also kept a lot of paintings of artists of the Blue Rider group that she kept safe during World War II. She kept them in the basement of her house in Bavaria to keep them safe from bombings. So the end of the war, she had all of these paintings and she thought, well, my life's almost at an end. On her 80th birthday she gifted a lot of these paintings to a local art gallery in Munich which has an extensive collection of blue-rider paintings.
Speaker 2:Which gallery is it? Or did you say museum?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think they call themselves a museum over there a lot, the Lenbach House in Munich. So she did that and she also had like a rider that her private papers and diaries and all that could not be made public until 20 years after her death. Don't know why she did that. She was originally going to throw them all away because she was hurt so badly by Kandinsky that she just you know it's like set a fire to the photos and stuff. So it was only the gallery director of that museum at the time who had become friendly with her, that said, please don't throw them away, but let me keep them or you keep them and then, after you've died, we'll make them public, which is how we've got to see them. Various authors have taken the letters, the correspondence between them and made books, and that's where I found a lot of information as well in their letters.
Speaker 2:Any other of the 12 letters or diaries that you were able like. I'm just fascinated by that. So, like I'm just curious, was it the same kind of thing for others?
Speaker 1:uh, where it was, uh, at their death, they donated them, as opposed to another mode of them being saved over these years um, yes, a lot of these women artists that I discuss survived after World War II and they kept all the letters of correspondence between their husbands. Like Elizabeth Edmund Mackey, she kept correspondence with her that her husband wrote letters from the front, as did friends Mark with Maria Mark. They kept their letters and they just wrote about their lives with them and it does make you feel like you were there, you witnessed it, you're part of it when you're reading these memoirs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and also you had mentioned to me when we were corresponding, about the Museum of the Lost Generation being a factor in your research, and I find them to be such a wonderful resource, so would you describe, like, how they factored into your work?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it was because I was trying to find out why these artists were unknown and there seemed to be a gap there.
Speaker 1:After World War II, the art world moved from Europe to America, basically New York and it was very male-oriented and I thought there's got to be something more here within Germany, that where these women are part of some sort of remembrance, and that's where I came across this lost generation or even stolen generation some of them are called where during National Socialism in the 30s and throughout the Second World War, these artists were regarded as degenerate and their works degenerate and a lot of their works were destroyed and they weren't allowed to paint anymore and exhibit anymore. And all of that's just gone, it's lost, it's never to be seen again. And that made me look. For is there somebody that's doing something about this? And that's when I discovered this museum, and it is actually a private collection, I believe. And it is actually a private collection, I believe. And this gentleman that owns it that's his in life, that's what he wants to do, he wants to continue collecting as many artworks as he can, and I think that's very admirable.
Speaker 2:I agree. Well, the work you're doing is very admirable and I appreciate you walking us through and giving us as much as you can of the background of these 12 women. And what would you say to anyone who's wondering how is this relevant today and to future generations? Like, how do you see the importance of preserving and highlighting the work of these women?
Speaker 1:Well, I've always believed that the past informs the present, and I'm writing about these artists from 120 years ago. More Things have not really changed much for female artists in the 21st century. They're still not regarded as equal. I'm thinking more of an art historical line here, in that education teaches a male-centric art history. There's not many females in there, and we need to change that. We need to make the public aware that there were equals in the timeline of art history, and the only way to do that is to explain to the current generation what the past generation went through, so we don't make the same mistakes now. And the only way we can do that really is through education, because the school system, the university system, as I said, just concentrates on male artists. Curators and gallery directors come out of the university system and then that's all they are. They try and promote men rather than women.
Speaker 2:So I hope that answers your question yeah, absolutely, and I guess, in that same vein, the idea of why it's important to create discourse about the social context of art.
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly along the same lines, because art is, it is social, it is a commentary on that era, when it was made. For these artists that I'm discussing, it was that time, that era. What was important to them? Some of them, because they didn't have a lot of training, they tended to do their own environments, which was just the genre, like a still life. That was a commentary, yes, of their environment. But when a male artist did a social sorry, a still life, he was an avant-garde. A still life, he was an avant-garde. So at that time, in that era, there was that social thing that still needs to be discussed. It's an equal thing and the current generation is slowly understanding that. But contemporary artists, I mean. But my thesis is based on the past and this is where I want the social justice to happen for the artists of the past, which will inform the present.
Speaker 2:That brings me to ask we've talked a lot about instances of the injustices, and do you have, or has, your concept of justice evolved over this research, or did you have one going in that you still maintain now in?
Speaker 1:that you still maintain now yeah, look, I've always had my sense of justice is respect, that you show respect to everyone, regardless of race, gender, religion. You show respect, and I think that's how I was brought up and and I think this research has just reinforced that for me that, um, there was no respect towards these women. Yes, it was a patriarchal society um, they knew it, they grew up in it but there was no respect towards them. And this is this is what I want to do. I want to give them the respect that they deserve.
Speaker 2:What kind of feedback have you been receiving from, because you've given presentations, I believe, before our conversation. What feedback? Like surprise, or has there been any pushback, or just the range?
Speaker 1:It's all been positive. In fact, some of the presentations I've given, you know, with slideshows, I've actually shown images of the artworks and given them the side-by-side Like. Here's six images three are by women, three are by men. They're not captioned, but who do you think painted which you know? Can you tell which is done by a woman and which is done by a man? No, we can't. But gee, these images are amazing. Um, you know why haven't we heard of this artist before? A lot of people have made notes and tried to do their own research on it oh, that's great.
Speaker 2:I I wondered too, like, uh, you, when you were talking about I think it was perhaps in relation to Kandinsky that this work by a woman looked just as good or comparable to, and I wondered if the first thought, if there was going to be any retractors, it would be well, you know, she was copycatting this great artist in front of her, so it's just a copy and that's not great art. What do you say to that? Yeah, well, that's not true.
Speaker 1:But this, this is, this is the discourse that that I've been dealing with. That that's the paradigm at the moment and I'm challenging that paradigm. I'm challenging the discourse because it's sexist. It's inherently sexist. All the discourse, whether it's been written by men or women, is sexist. It still refers to male artists being better than female artists. So I point out in my thesis the basis of avant-gardism, that it goes back to the Renaissance. So it's nothing new. If you try and express yourself, that is then an invention of what you're doing. Everyone is reinventing themselves and it's not something that's just for men, for male artists alone, it's an equal thing. So it's not something that's just for men, for male artists alone, it's an equal thing. So it's not a copycat. You might be side by side with someone in art class and looking at what they're doing and they're looking at what you're doing, but you're still doing it. It's still your creation, your input.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much. This has really been such a stimulating conversation. I wonder what are you doing going forward? Are you continuing this research in another avenue? How is it progressing?
Speaker 1:Well, I hope to finish my thesis by mid-next year and after that I will be converting it to a book. So that's a big project for me. Yes, because it'll be the first one written in English about these women artists. One thing I don't think I've said before is that when you hear the term male labour, it is not relating to a group or a movement. It's a derogatory term that was used against women, was used against women.
Speaker 1:Some of my research authors are a bit confused and think that it was a movement or it was just a group of the number of women. No, it wasn't, and this is what I hope to explain in my book and after I finish the book, which should take a little while. Um, one of the things I'd like to do is do the conference circuit so that I can explain to people what our book's about and and the lives of these artists, and also edit wikipedia, because I believe Wikipedia is really underrated. It's a good resource. It's a resource I used at first as a stepping stone to finding more information, but there's a lot of inaccuracies in it. I'd like to spend some time editing that, if I can, and introducing new artists that are not available.
Speaker 2:If you would. The cover image that you sent me is so compelling and I would love it if you could just describe the image and how you put your input into it.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, well, that image is by Julie Walthorn. She was an artist that I was very tempted to include in my 12, but she's a little bit better known than some of the others that I've chosen. She did a lot of work, commissioned work for the magazine Jugend, of which that image is on its cover. I think it was September, I can't remember the year. I chose it because it's just an erythral sort of image of youth, innocence, naivety, but yet there's also in it a type of strength that I that's what I feel from the woman being portrayed. Yet that strength has been muted, because not only do we not know much about it, they weren't able to really talk much themselves. They were muted during their era. Hence I put the black tape across the mouth because their voice is being muted. But that's really a powerful image for me, and it's also been like the guiding icon that I've been using throughout my thesis.
Speaker 2:There will be links in the show notes to learn more. If you were intrigued by this podcast, it would be much appreciated if you could leave a rating, a review and tag Warfare of Art and Law podcast. Until next time, this is Stephanie Drotty bringing you Warfare of Art and Law. Thank you so much for listening and remember injustice anywhere is a threat to justice Everywhere.