'Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Cadiz'
Abstract
In the first decades of the 20th century the «modern woman» appeared, it
was an international phenomenon which was called in a different way by each European
country: flapper, maschietta, garçonne, etc. Evident inheritors of the French model, the Spanish
artists of these years personified and reflected in her works the aesthetics, the habits, the
conquests and the independence and emancipatory aspirations of the new women. With
them, the old gender barriers were fractured, and new plastic possibilities appeared to help
these women to live and shape the vanguards. By means of a thematic study of the artistic
production and the creative personalities of these artists (Maruja Mallo, Ángeles Santos,
Delhy Tejero or Concha Méndez, among others), we can understand what was the
significance and the popularity of this new model, which put in crisis the ideas that were
shaping the definitions, solid and officially established, of gender, modernity and
vanguards