A Book Talk: Women Artists and Abstract Art in Postwar Rome

Following the publication of Women Artists and Abstract Art in Postwar Rome: Connected by Travel in summer 2026, co-editors Jelena Stojković and Daniel Sturgis talk about their research of a transient community of abstract women artists who lived and worked in Rome in the postwar period.

There were many women among the international artists who travelled to Rome to study, to develop their practice and their careers, or in pursuit of freedom afforded by a life abroad in the decades after the World War Two, and their work often became abstract in nature as a result. Women artists working in an abstract manner were visiting, staying or living in postwar Rome from a wide range of locales—including Iran, Argentina, and Turkey—bringing with them their specific ideas and training, as well as different interests in colour, light, artmaking, or space.

Focusing on the Chilean-born Carmengloria Morales and two Yugoslav artists, Mira Brtka and Milena Čubraković, the talk brings to the fore the radical nature of experiments with abstraction among these women artists. Also, by situating them in a broader network of like-minded artists, critics, and collectors living and working in Rome at the same time, it considers their distinct contribution to the transnational transmission of artistic ideas and methods of work during the 1960s and 1970s.

Organised by Dr Pia Gottschaller, Reader in Technical Art History at the Courtauld