Five essays on women's art and perception in interwar Austria

The essays translated in this collection are representative of debates and views about women in art in Austria in the 1920s and 1930s. The texts are reviews of exhibitions of work by women artists, as well as discussions of ideas of design and gender by women critics. They also include contemporary reviews of the so-called Elida Prize of 1928, for the 'Most Beautiful Female Portrait.' The texts are accompanied with an Introduction that puts them into context, considering evolving ideas of women as designers and as artists. The Introduction demonstrates that while the focus of most research on gender and culture in the interwar period has been on the rise of the idea of the 'New Woman,' there were other, more conservative ideas of female identity.