Käthe Kollwitz: Art As A Mirror Of Social Contidtions

Born in Königsberg in 1867, Käthe Kollwitz begins her artistic training immediately after leaving school. Women were not admitted to the art academy, so she takes private lessons and attended the Ladies’ Academy of the Association of Berlin Women Artists. After completing her studies, Käthe marries Karl Kollwitz. The young couple moves to the working-class district of Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin, to Weißenburger Straße, which is now called Kollwitzstraße. She achieves her first artistic success with her etchings ‘A Weavers’ Revolt’, which are inspired by Gerhart Hauptman’s play of the same name, but which do not depict either the play or the 1844 weavers’ revolt. Kollwitz transposes the revolt to the present day, thereby denouncing the misery of the working class. Kollwitz meets little favour from Emperor Wilhelm II, who speaks of ‘gutter art’. Her poster for the Home Work Exhibition, depicting a weary worker, angers the Empress so much that she refuseds o attend. Shortly after the outbreak of the First World War, Kollwitz’s son Peter dies in the First Battle of Flanders. The loss of her child brings the artist into contact with pacifist and socialist movements. Although she never joins a political party, she designs posters for the KPD, the SPD, the International Workers’ Aid, the International Trade Union Confederation and many others. Her works are serious, unvarnished and powerful. Her style draws on elements of Expressionism and Realism. Kollwitz is close friends with other artists such as Heinrich Zille, Otto Nagel and Ernst Barlach. Barlach’s famous sculpture ‘The Floating Figure’ unmistakably bears her facial features. Until she is forced to resign from the Prussian Academy of Arts in 1933, Kollwitz leads the masterclass in printmaking there. The Nazis impose an exhibition ban on her; many of her works are confiscated as “degenerate” and sold off at bargain prices in forced auctions. Kollwitz devotes herself to her late works in her Berlin studio and dies on 22 April 1945, shortly before the end of the war, in Dresden.