Kathe Kollwitz
(1867 - 1945) |
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Art Work
| Name: |
Kathe Kollwitz |
| Gender: |
Female |
| Place of Birth: |
Konigsberg |
| Nationality: |
German |
| Birth: |
1867 |
| Death: |
1945 |
| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
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| Medium: |
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| Method: |
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| Style: |
Naturalism, Expressionism |
| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painter
Printmaker
Sculptor |
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Biography
The life of Kathe Kollwitz spanned more than seventy-five years of political upheaval and social unrest, war and revolution; four years after she was born, the German Empire was proclaimed and just over two weeks after her death, the Second World War came to an end in Europe. Born in Konigsberg, East Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia), Kollwitz decided early on that graphic art was her preferred medium. It suited her extraordinary talent for drawing and meant that her work was available to a wide range of buyers at an affordable price- Self-referential art was never her thing: I should like to exert influences in these times when human beings are so perplexed and in need of help', she wrote in 1922.
In the Berlin working-class district of Prenzlauer Berg, where she lived with her doctor husband Karl Kollwitz, she experienced at first hand the poverty and misery endured daily by the people who lived there. At the start of her career, she executed two series of etchings on historical subjects, the Silesian Weavers' Revolt and the sixteenth-century Peasants' War, in which her gripping, realistic scenes portrayed the suffering and resistance of ordinary folk. These etchings quickly brought her recognition Kollwitz later concentrated on topical social and political issues, such as unemployment, hunger, child mortality, violence and war. She had already come into contact with socialist thought both through her father, a mason and preacher, and her brother. In 1919, she designed a commemorative print for Karl Liebknecht, the murdered Social Democrat, and participated in exhibitions of workers' art. She herself never belonged to a political party, however.
The lithograph Seed Corn Ought not to Be Ground - the title of which is a quotation taken from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's 1795-96 novel Wihelm Meister's Apprenticeship - was her last work of graphic art. It was executed at the beginning of 1942 when, under the Nazi regime, Kollwitz was no longer permitted to show her work in public. With her strong arms and hands, a mother determinedly envelops her children, whose big eyes peek out from beneath her coat. In its symmetrical structure, the motif is reminiscent of medieval images of the Virgin of the Protecting Cloak, but this mother is shielding her children not only from attacks from outside but also from their own thirst for action. These are lads, real Berlin lads who, like young horses, get a scent of something and want out there', according to the artist. Her eighteen year- old son Peter, a volunteer in the First World War, had been killed in Flanders in 1914; her eldest grandson was killed in the Second World War, a few months after the lithograph was completed.
Time and again, Kollwitz turned to the theme of the mother as protectress, mourner and fighter, not only in her woodcuts and lithographs but also in her sculpture. In 1993, an enlarged version of her sculpture Pieta, of 1938, was erected in Karl Friedrich Schinkel's 'Neue Wache' in Berlin to remind future generations of the evils of war and tyranny. With its clear and powerful imagery and universally understood themes of social protest, the work of Kathe Kollwitz has always met with a wide response. Stylistically, it developed independently of the changing currents of modernism and always remained firmly rooted in its subject The forceful message of her work occasionally makes the viewer forget just how expertly she employed her artistic means when giving that message form in as convincing a manner as possible.
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Samples of Work
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