War Languages
Women and war in the art of
Käthe Kollwitz
Vesa Matteo Piludu
University of Helsinki
Department of Art Research
Millet Gleaners 1857
Angelus
Shepherdess with Her Flock
1864
Title
The Weeders
Date 1868
Song of the Lark, 1884
Woman Sewing by Lamplight 1870
Jean Francois Millet - 1850
Millet Winnower 1847-8
Courbet, The grain Sifters
Gustave Courbet, Sleeping spinner 1857
A woman Asleep 1657
Daumier, Honor
Laveuse au Quai d'Anjou (Laundress on the Quai d'Anjou)
c. 1860
Daumier, Honor
The Burden (The Laundress) c. 1850-53
Degas, women ironig
Degas
 Degas’ penetrating observation,
captured subtle differences in
people’s faces and body language
(especially within different
economic classes).
 Degas respected the hard-working
immigrants from Eastern Europe,
especially working women.
Woman ironing', Edgar Degas, c.1890
 The art of Degas was that of a
'Naturalist', depicting what was
considered “vulgar”
 laundresses were commonly
thought of as borderline prostitutes
- in a way that was almost scientific
Two washer women by Degas
Il quarto stato, Pellizza da Valpredo (1901)
Käthe Kollwitz - Farmers' war
 Much of the art of modern social protest traces its roots to the
work of German artist Käthe Kollwitz.
 One of a cycle of prints and drawings which the youthful Kollwitz
produced on the theme of peasant revolt
 The cycle hearkened back to the Bauernkrieg (literally, "farmers'
war") of the sixteenth century while portraying the dire straits of
agricultural laborers in contemporary Germany.
Käthe Kollwitz Ploughers,
etching and aquatint, 1906
 The Plougher of her Peasant War
series symbolises the oppressed of
every age. Not the man behind the
plough, but reduced to pulling it
himself, he is a virtual beast of
burden
Kathe Kollwitz (German, 1867 - 1945)
Brot! (Bread!)
1933
Arbeitslosigkeit, 1909, (Unemployment )
Hunger, 1925
Käthe Kollwitz
Hunger 1925
Mother Holding Child in Her Arms, Second
Version 1910
Kathe Kollwitz, Poverty, 1893-94
Käthe Kollwitz (German, 1867-1945),
Tod in Wasser / Death in the water
 this lithograph, produced shortly
after Hitler assumed power, shows
a drowned family, perhaps a
prophetic vision of Germany's
future as a country about to be
drowning in death
Kathe Kollwitz (1867-1945),
Woman with her Dead Child (1903)
Käthe Kollwitz
Death Seizes the Children 1934
KATHE KOLLWITZ 1867 - 1945
Woman in the Lap of Death (Tod mit Frau im Schoss)
Woodcut on ivory wove paper, 1921
Rosa Luxemburg
 Karl Liebknecht and Rosa
Luxemburg were among the
founders of the Berlin
Spartakusbund (Spartacus
League)
 On January 15, 1919, Liebknecht
and Luxemburg were shot to
death during the Spartacus Revolt
on the pretext that they were
attempting escape.
 In this instance Kollwitz
emphasizes grief and the human
element over any explicit political
reference
lmost whetted by Käthe Kollwitz
 No wonder the resentment of
Kollwitz's peasant woman is also
sharpened as she whets her
scythe-in an etching significantly
titled Almost whetted
Käthe Kollwitz (German, 1867-1945)
Weberzug [March of the Weavers], fourth plate in Ein
Weberaustand [Revolt of the Weavers], 1897
Käthe Kollwitz
Revolt, THE PEASANT WAR 1899-1908
Käthe Kollwitz, Outbreak, 1903
Kathe Kollwitz, Killed in Action (1921)
Kathe Kollwitz, Widows and Orphans (1919)
The parents
Mothers
After the Battle by Kathe Kollwitz.
The Survivors, a drawing by the German artist Kathe
Kollwitz, was used for a peace congress in The Hague,
Holland, in 1922.
 The survivors say: War
to War!
 The text on the right
side says: Do not teach
the children to glorify the
war and war hero's;
teach them to despise
war