Käthe Kollwitz (German, 1867–1945)

The influential work of Käthe Kollwitz resulted from the horrors that marked her life. Born in the Prussian city of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia) in 1867, she was destined to experience the direct consequences of both World Wars. Her progressive middle-class family promoted her artistic career by enrolling her in private lessons with Rudolph Mauer in Königsberg and sending her to study in Berlin under Karl Stauffer-Bern in 1885. In order to persuade her to choose art over marriage, her father sent her to study in Munich following her engagement in 1889 to Dr. Karl Kollwitz, whom she nevertheless married upon her return to Berlin in 1891.

During World War I, Kollwitz lost one of her sons at the age of 18 just ten days after he deployed. Devastated, her work from that point forward would reflect the terror and pain that the war had caused, particularly its effect on women. Cheap mass production of her anti-war prints allowed her to reach a wide audience, and her success peaked during the Weimar Republic (1919–1933). In 1919, Kollwitz became the first woman to be admitted to the Prussian Academy of Art, where she was given the title of professor. She ran a printmaking studio starting in 1928 and the following year received the Prussian honor Pour le mérite.

With the rise of Nazi power, Kollwitz’s fortunes turned. Her participation in a petitionary action against the Nazis in 1932 led to her expulsion from the Academy and the loss of her studio once Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. Soon after, she was banned from exhibiting her work. Her later work focused on the anticipation of death and the mourning of mothers for their children, and she produced sculptures that embodied the themes explored in her prints. During World War II, she lost her husband and grandson; she left Berlin for Moritzburg in 1943 after her house was destroyed, along with much of her art, in an air raid. She died in 1945, two weeks before the German surrender, and is celebrated today for her powerful works that confront social injustice and human suffering.

Kelsey Martin and Nicole Myers, DMA exhibition text Women Artists in Europe from the Monarchy to Modernism, 2018.

"Actually my art is not pure art...But still art. Each works as he can...my art has purpose. I want to have an effect on this time, in which human beings are so much at a loss and so in need of help."  —Kӓthe Kollwitz, diary entry, December 4, 1922

Living in Berlin during one of the most turbulent eras in German history, Kӓthe Kollwitz focused much of her artwork on the social issues affecting workers and women. She trained as a painter but dedicated her career primarily to sculpture and the graphic arts, believing that the print—which can be easily reproduced and distributed to a wide audience—is the medium best suited for the artist concerned with social commentary. Her first print cycle, a series of three lithographs and three etchings called The Weavers Revolt, was inspired by Gerhart Hauptmann's play The Weavers, which tells the story of cottage industry workers who stage a rebellion against their oppressive boss and are ultimately killed.

Profoundly impacted by the horrific result of World War I and her younger son's death in battle, Kollwitz used her artwork to explore themes of suffering and loss. Her 1924 lithograph Bread is a meditation on the impact of violence on mothers and wives. Although the expressionist group Die Brücke had popularized the woodcut at the beginning of the century, Kollwitz did not adopt the medium until after the war, when, in 1919, she created Memorial Sheet of Karl Liebknecht. Sharp contrasts and simple forms characterize this depiction of workers grieving over the body of the leftist revolutionary, who was assassinated during the struggle for power at the start of the Weimar Republic.

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