Käthe Kollwitz (July 8, 1867 – April 22, 1945) was a German painter, printmaker, and
sculptor whose work offered an eloquent and often searing account of the human
condition, and the tragedy of war, in the first half of the 20th century. Her empathy for the
less fortunate, expressed most famously through the graphic means of drawing, etching,
lithography, and woodcut, embraced the victims of poverty, hunger, and war. Initially her
work was grounded in Naturalism, and later took on Expressionistic qualities. She used LINE
in incredible ways to portray meaning and emotion that would grab the viewer.
Naturalism:
Expressionism:
*Look at the direction and thoughtful placement of each line to portray a mood or feeling
or to lead the viewer’s eye. Look at the quite different, yet equally powerful emotions
portrayed in both of these images. You can almost feel the gentle touch of the child’s skin
and the rough, aged, weathered skin of the woman on the right. You can feel a warmth in
your chest from the love emanating from the embrace of the mother and a hollowing in
your chest as you absorb the tired, sorrowful, worn look of the woman on the right.
While LINE is one of the simplest elements of art it can be one of the strongest if used
thoughtfully.
More about the artist:
Kathe Kollwitz is regarded as one of the most important German artists of the twentieth
century, and as a remarkable woman who created timeless art works against the backdrop
of a life of great sorrow, hardship and heartache.
Kathe was born in 1867 in Konigsberg, East Prussia (now Kalingrad in Russia). She studied
art in Berlin and began producing etchings in 1880 In 1881 she married Dr Karl Kollwitz and
they settled in a working class area of north Berlin. In 1896 her second son, Peter, was
born. From 1898 to 1903 Kathe taught at the Berlin School of Women Artists, and in 1910
began to create sculpture.
In 1914 her son Peter was killed in Flanders. The loss of Peter contributed to her socialist
and pacifist political sympathies. Kathe believed that art should reflect the social
conditions of the time and during the 1920s she produced a series of works reflecting her
concern with the themes of war, poverty, working class life and the lives of ordinary
women.
In 1932 the war memorial to her son Peter - The Parents - was dedicated at Vladslo military
cemetery in Flanders. Kathe became the first woman to be elected to the Prussian
Academy of Arts, but in 1933, when Hitler came to power, she was expelled from the
Academy. In 1936 she was barred by the Nazis from exhibiting, her art was classified as
'degenerate' and her works were removed from galleries.
Kathe’s son Peter was killed in the early days World War I in 1914 at the age of 19. In 1940
Karl Kollwitz died. In 1942 her grandson, Peter, was killed at the Russian front. In 1943
Kathe's home was destroyed by British bombing along with many of her works and she was
evacuated from Berlin to Moritzburg, near Dresden.
Kathe Kollwitz was informed of her son's death in action on 30 October. ‘Your pretty shawl
will no longer be able to warm our boy,' was the touching way she broke the news to a
close friend. To another friend she admitted, 'There is in our lives a wound which will never
heal. Nor should it.' This feeling of loss and sorrow is seen in many of her later works.
By December 1914 Kolhwitz, one of the foremost artists of her day, had formed the idea of
creating a memorial to her son, with his body outstretched, 'the father at the head, the
mother at the feet', to commemorate 'the sacrifice of all the young volunteers'. As time
went on she attempted various other designs, but was dissatisfied with them all. Kollwitz
put the project aside temporarily in 1919, but her commitment to see it through when it
was right was unequivocal. 'I will come back, I shall do this work for you, for you and the
others,' she noted in her diary in June 1919. Twelve years later, she kept her word: in April
1931 she was at last able to complete the sculpture. 'In the autumn - Peter, - I shall bring it
to you,' she wrote in her diary. Her work was exhibited in the National Gallery in Berlin and
then transported to Belgium, where it was placed, as she had promised, adjacent to her
son's grave. There it rests to this day.
The story of the pilgrimage of one mother and father to their son's grave stands for millions
of others. In August 1932 a war memorial was unveiled at the Roggevelde German war
cemetery, near Vladslo in Flemish Belgium: a sculpture of two parents mourning their son,
killed in October 1914· It is the work of Kathe Kollwitz. There is no more moving monument
to the grief of those who lost their sons in the war than this simple stone sculpture of two
parents, on their knees, before their son's grave. She and her husband are on their knees
before their son's grave. They are there to beg his forgiveness, to ask him to accept their
failure to find a better way, their failure to prevent the madness of war from cutting his
life short.
In the spring of 1945, Kollwitz knew she was dying.' War', she wrote in her last letter,
'accompanies me to the end.' She died on 22 April 1945, two weeks before the end of World
War II.
The Parents From War
The Mothers