A Woman's Eye, Her Art

Reframing the narrative through art and life

Drusilla Modjeska

$55

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Penguin Random House Australia
30 September 2025

History of Art & Design Styles; History of art & design styles: from c 1900 -

How six extraordinary women artists of the twentieth century reframed the narrative through their art and lives.

When a woman makes art, what does she see? When she picks up her brush and looks in the mirror? When she takes off her clothes and paints herself naked? Or when she raises her camera and turns it towards another woman, a model naked there in front of her? And how is she seen when she turns to face the men, the artists, her colleagues, her friends, her lovers?

A Woman's Eye, Her Art looks back to the lives and art of European modernist women who recast the ways in which women's bodies could be seen - from the self-portraits of Paula Modersohn-Becker, to the Surrealist Claude Cahun who exposed the masquerades of femininity, to the radical nudes of photo-artists Lee Miller and Dora Maar. Alongside them in Paris during the first decades of the twentieth century were many artist-women, their friends and colleagues, including Clara Westhoff-Rilke and Gabriele M nter, Leonora Carrington and Meret Oppenheim. In this book, Drusilla Modjeska examines why these women still matter and, in the vein of her seminal and bestselling work Stravinsky's Lunch, connects their past to our present.

This beautiful book, richly illustrated and elegantly written is about the spirit it took for these artist-women to step out on that path, and the courage it took to stay there. It is the story of what they saw, and how they were seen as they crashed against the hypocrisies that are embedded deep in the structures of society. And it is about hard-fought freedoms as in their different ways they changed the landscape of the art world and reframed the narrative.

By: Drusilla Modjeska
Imprint: Penguin Random House Australia
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 1mm, Width: 1mm,
Weight: 1g
ISBN: 9780143795711
ISBN 10: 0143795716
Pages: 512
Publication Date: 30 September 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Drusilla Modjeska is one of Australia's most acclaimed writers. She was born in England and lived in Papua New Guinea before arriving in Australia in 1971. Her books include Exiles at Home; the NSW Premier's Award-winning Poppy; Sisters, which she co-edited; the Nita B. Kibble, NSW Premier's Award and Australian Bookseller's Book of the Year Award-winner The Orchard; Timepieces; and Secrets with Robert Dessaix and Amanda Lohrey. She is also the author of the bestselling Stravinsky's Lunch, which won the New South Wales Premier's Literary Award for Non-Fiction and the ALS Gold Medal. Her first novel, The Mountain, was shortlisted for the 2013 Miles Franklin Award, the Western Australia Premier's Award and the Barbara Jefferis Award. In 2015 she published her memoir, Second Half First, which was shortlisted for several prizes including the Prime Minister's Literary Award and the Victorian Premier's Literary Award.