Käthe Kollwitz

The Käthe Kollwitz Museum in Cologne (Köln), Germany You can take a virtual tour of the entire museum. The accompanying text is solid: informative but not overwhelming. Käthe Kollwitz's imagery is marked by poverty stricken, sickly women who are barely able to care for or nourish their children. Kollwitz's art has a single purpose: she is advocating on behalf of the working poor, the suffering and the sick. Her work serves as an indictment of the social conditions in Germany during the late 19th and early 20th century. Kollwitz’s work is characteristic of expressionism. She is expressing a personal vision, so that others will “see” and perhaps thus feel the suffering she has witnessed as the wife of a doctor who took care of the working poor. Kollwitz’s commitment to championing the rights of underprivileged people never faltered. Her work is very effective precisely because she is able to express human suffering in artistic terms. Perhaps the most important evidence of the emotional efficacy of her work is how the men in power reacted. In 1897, for example, Kaiser Wilhelm prevented Kollwitz from receiving a gold medal at the Berlin Salon because of the "subversive" nature of her subject matter. Kollwitz also encountered difficulties during the Nazi era. In 1933 she was forced to resign her position as the first female professor appointed to the Prussian Academy (in 1919); soon thereafter she was forbidden to exhibit her art. Kollwitz's home was bombed in Her art was classified as "degenerate."degenerate

Käthe Kollwitz Poverty etching and drypoint

Käthe Kollwitz Woman with Dead Child 1903 etching and drypoint

Käthe Kollwitz Battlefield 1907 etching mounted on wove paper

Käthe Kollwitz The Mothers 1921 pen and brush

Käthe Kollwitz The Call of Death 1934 charcoal on laid paper

Käthe Kollwitz Mother with Two Children bronze

Käthe Kollwitz Pieta bronze

Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for Victims of Wars and Terrorism

Käthe Kollwitz Self Portrait 1898 color lithograph

Käthe Kollwitz Self Portrait 1924 ink and wash on green paper

Käthe Kollwitz Self Portrait Facing Right 1938 lithograph