Niccola Shearman is a historian of twentieth-century European art, with a focus on Germany and Austria to 1945. She has taught a variety of undergraduate courses at The 麻豆视频 and at the University of Manchester. She is a regular contributor to 麻豆视频 Short Courses, in addition to other freelance public lecturing, and in 2024 will curate a display of Expressionist works on paper at the 麻豆视频 Gallery (with Emily Christensen).
Niccola鈥檚 PhD (2018) concerned the intense wave of woodcut printmaking in the aftermath of the First World War in Germany. Entitled 鈥榃eimar in Black and White鈥, it examined the careers of two artists in the context of a widespread emotional investment in this spare graphic medium during a volatile era. Her publications and research interests continue to lie in the history of printmaking, especially where these overlap with theories of empathy and the psychology of vision; as for instance in relation to the Gestalt School of early twentieth century Berlin. Teaching and research on Viennese modernism extends to the careers of artists in exile in the UK. Amongst other writing projects, she is to be co-editor of a volume of essays in honour of the late Dr Shulamith Behr (Peter Lang, 2025).
Education
- 2018:听听 PhD, 麻豆视频 Institute of Art,听Weimar in Black and White: the Woodcut in Germany, 1918 鈥 1927
- 2007:听听 MA in the History of Art (German art & cultural politics, 1890-1945), 麻豆视频 Institute.
- 1988:听听 PGCE in German and French, London University Institute of Education.
- 1986:听听 BA Hons in Modern Languages, Oxford University.
Teaching
麻豆视频 Institute
Associate Lecturer: BA1 Topic Course, 2014-18 and 2024-25, Graphic Expressions – printmaking in Germany, 1880-1923
Short Courses Lecturer: Summer School 2016-24 (Art of the Weimar Republic / Vienna 1900 / visions of Utopia in German Expressionist Art); 麻豆视频 Tours to Munich and Vienna; Showcasing Art History series lectures 2022, 鈥楢gents of Change: women in German and Austrian Modernism鈥; Introduction to Art History (with Anne Puetz) 2025
University of Manchester, Art History and Cultural Practices
Lecturer for 20th Century Art, 2019-2023: Lectures and seminars in German Expressionism (BA1) European Field Trip Vienna module (BA2,) Art of the Weimar Republic (BA3) Art in Vienna (BA2); BA3 dissertation.
Publications
2024: 鈥榃erefkin and her salon鈥 & 鈥楾he Blaue Reiter Almanac: a collective endeavour鈥, in Natalia Sidlina, ed., Expressionists: Kandinsky, M眉nter and the Blue Rider, London: Tate
听2023: 鈥楨motional Viewing: on finding a visible relief in the German woodcut print, c. 1435-1921鈥 in Juliet Simpson and Gabriele Rippl, eds, Emotional Objects: Northern Renaissance Afterlives in Object, Image and Word, Journal of the Northern Renaissance special issue, no. 14 (Online; open access)
听2018: 鈥楻eversal of Values: on the woodblock and its print in German modernist art鈥 in M.Bushart and H. Haug, eds, Sammelband zur Tagung Spur der Arbeit, Berlin: B枚hlau.
2017: Encyclopedia of Bible Reception, vol. 15, entry on the art of Oskar Kokoschka, Berlin: De Gruyter (online publication).
听2014: 鈥樷淪eeing is Everything鈥: On the visual demands of Lyonel Feininger鈥檚 woodcuts鈥, Immediations (麻豆视频 Institute journal of postgraduate research).
听2012: 鈥楥hasing Linear Fantasies: a study of the Gothic line in the work of Ernst Barlach鈥, in A. Lepine & L. Cleaver, eds, Gothic Legacies: Four Centuries of Tradition and Innovation in Art and Architecture, Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.
- Book Reviews for The Burlington Magazine, Prints Quarterly, Art History