"Between us Sleeps our child - art"

Although the interstices between creativity, procreativity and motherhood are frequently rehearsed tropes within feminist analyses of creative practices by women artists, very little comparative research in English has been undertaken of the varying experiences of the discursive frameworks around women, identity and creativity in the work of German women artists within modernism. For both Kollwitz and Modersohn-Becker artistic creation and motherhood were twin concerns in their self-constructed identities as artists, yet for both von Werefkin and Gabriele Münter the poles of creativity and procreativity were more complexly figured. Whilst mothers and children feature as predominant subject matter in the works of Kollwitz and Modersohn-Becker, and to some extent in the work of Münter, specifically between 1908 and 1910, the subject is virtually absent in the works of von Werefkin for whom “art” is the child who sublimates her erotic desire, if her 'Lettres à un Inconnu', are to be believed. Münter’s Young Girl with Doll 1908-09 (Milwaukee Art Museum) is one of Münter’s most touching portraits of children during this period and bears interesting comparisons with both Modersohn-Becker’s images on the same theme but also with the provocative images of Franzi and Marzella being produced by Die Brücke artists. This particular painting will act as a springboard for my considerations of the role of children within German Expressionist’s ‘turn to youth’ and the particular complexities that this subject matter entailed for Werefkin (who for several years acted as stepmother to Jawlensky and Helene Nesnakomoff’s son Andreas in bizarre ménage a trois), and her contemporaries.