A number of recent exhibitions have celebrated the New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) that emerged in Germany in the 1920s, and was dominated by male painters such as Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, and George Grosz. But 20 years earlier in Germany, four pioneering female artists had already pushed on to modernism. They were Paula Modersohn-Becker, who painted stunning nude self-portraits; Gabriele Münter, who spoke five languages and was Wassily Kandinsky’s lover; Marianne Werefkin, born to Russian aristocrats; and Käthe Kollwitz, who won international fame for her drawings of working-class people. “Making Modernism” shows the work of all four women in three rooms at the Royal Academy. —Elena Clavarino