Kthe Kollwitz

(1867-1945)

Julia E. Benson
ARTS 1610 100
December 12, 2000

Contents
I.

The Life of Kthe Kollwitz

II.

The Work of Kthe Kollwitz

III.

A Weavers Rebellion

IV.

Drawing Project

V.

A.

Selbstbildnis, 1919

B.

Derived Works

Bibliography

The Life of Kthe Kollwitz

Kthe (KAY-teh) Ida Schmidt was born on July 8 1867in Knigsberg, East Prussia (now
Kaliningrad, Russia). She was the fifth of seven children (four surviving past infancy) born to Karl
Schmidt, a mason and contractor, and his wife Katharina Schmidt, ne Rupp.
Prussia during this time was an authoritarian and repressed society, characterized by strict
conformance to the dictates of the ruling Hohenzollern family. The Schmidt family, however, was an
integral part of the Free Religious Congregation, a small sect with beliefs similar to todays Unitarians.
Katharina Schmidts father, Julius Rupp, had founded this organization some twenty years earlier in
opposition to the dictates of the state-controlled Protestant Church of East Prussia. This unconventionality
spilled over into many other areas of the Schmidt family life. Kthe, her brother Konrad, and her sisters
Julie and Lise were schooled privately rather than being subjected to the indoctrination of the state-run
schools. In particular, the Schmidt girls were educated far beyond the normal standard for girls in that era.
The family encouraged intellectual and artistic pursuits, as well as emphasizing a social consciousness far
beyond the norm for the time and giving each child the freedom to explore their own interests. Kthe and
her younger sister Lise roamed the streets of Knigsberg unchaperoned, absorbing the sights and sounds of
the working environs of the city. The images of struggle and poverty viewed during youth undoubtedly
formed the single most important influence on Kthes artistic subject matter throughout her life.
Kthe was a nervous and sensitive child, prone to both fits of temper and nightmares. This evolved
into recurrent depressions in her teens, which would follow her throughout her life and find their way into
her work. The nurturing attitude of her family, though, helped temper this sensitivity. Her seriousness and
lack of personal emotional expressiveness in later life would be modeled on her mothers behavior in her
youth.
In her late teens and early twenties, Kthe devoted herself to the study of art. In the late nineteenth
century, women were not admitted to the major art academies, so while still in Knigsberg, she took private
lessons with engraver Rudolf Maurer. Later, in Berlin, she attended the School for Women Artists, studying
with Swiss artist Karl Stauffer-Bern. While in Berlin, she was also introduced to the work of artist Max
Klinger, work that profoundly moved her and eventually turned her attention away from painting toward

graphic arts. Returning to Knigsberg, she again took private lessons, this time with Emil Neide, followed
by two years in Munich under the tutelage of Ludwig Herterich. In Munich, she first encountered Emma
Beate Jeep, who was to become her life-long friend and a model for many of her nude studies. Also during
this time, her brother Konrad introduced her to the concepts of socialism as espoused by Friedrich Engels
and Karl Marx, concepts that she readily embraced.
In 1891, Kthe married Karl Kollwitz, a young doctor. Kollwitz and his sister Lisebeth, orphaned
in their youth, had been friendly with the Schmidt family for years. Kollwitz shared the socialist ideals of
his close friend Konrad Schmidt, and thus had opted to open his practice in a working-class neighborhood
of Berlin. The Kollwitzes would live and work in this same building on Weissenburgerstrasse (now Kthe
Kollwitz Strasse) for the next fifty years, and here Kthe would see the working class men and women who
were her husbands patients, and who would become the inspiration and models for her own works.
Marriage, for Kthe, was a much-deliberated event, and one that she had great difficulty
reconciling with her own artistic ambitions. Her options as a single woman, socially and economically,
were painfully limited. Gainful employment to become a self-supporting graphic artist would be virtually
impossible, while continuing to live with her family was unlikely to prove productive. As a married
woman, though, it just might be possible to reconcile the roles of wife and artist, and thus gain a far greater
freedom to live and work as she pleased. In fact, she is the only one among the few well-known female
artist of her time to successfully combine marriage and work over an extended time. Other female artists
such as Suzanne Valadon, Paula Modersohn-Becker (with whom she is often compared) and Gwen John
either took lovers rather than marrying, or endured stormy marriages that eventually dissolved through
death or divorce.
The birth of sons Hans in 1892 and Peter in 1896 completed the Kollwitz family. Both Hans and
Peter would serve as occasional models for their mothers work during their childhood. Peter would
become one of the first casualties of World War I, killed in action at Dixmuiden, Belgium, on October 22,
1914. Peters death was an emotional blow from which Kollwitz never fully recovered. His death was the
inspiration for the memorial Mourning Parents, two granite figures modeled after Kthe and Karl, which
was installed seventeen years after his death near his grave in the cemetery in Dixmuiden.

In 1893, Kthe attended the premiere performance of Gerhard Hauptmanns play The Weavers,
which dramatized the Silesian peasants revolt of 1844. This seemingly inconsequential event in her life
had far-reaching consequences, as it caused her to abandon her current projects and embark on the first of
her great print cycles, A Weavers Rebellion. This series of six prints (a seventh was dropped from the
series), three etchings and three lithographs occupied Kthe for the next five years. Its exhibition, first in
1898 at the Greater Berlin Art Exposition, then in 1899 at the German Art Exposition in Dresden and in
1900 in London, established her as one of the great printmakers of her time. Juries for both the Berlin and
Dresden expositions awarded her medals; however, the Berlin award was blocked by Kaiser Wilhelm II,
who once stated Art should elevate and instructIt should not make the misery that exists appear even
more miserable than it is.1 This was not to be the last time that her subject matter offended Germanys
rulers Kaiserin Augusta Victoria, Wilhelm IIs consort, demanded that Kthes poster for the 1906
German Home Workers Exhibition be removed from display, while three decades later Adolf Hitler would
declare her anathema and prohibit further exhibition of her work.
From 1900 until the beginning of World War I, Kthe continued to develop her skills as an artist.
She began teaching at the Berlin School of Art for Women, where she herself had been a student. She
spent several weeks in Paris in 1904, studying sculpture at the Academ Julian, followed by several
months study in Florence, Italy in 1907 as a result of winning the Villa Romana Prize established by Max
Klinger. She produced her second great print cycle, Peasants War, between 1902 and 1908, as well as a
series of drawings for the progressive Munich monthly Simplizissimus and numerous posters.
With the beginning of World War I and the loss of her younger son shortly afterward, Kthe
struggled with her art as well as her life. As she began to slowly come to terms with her deep grief, she
began to struggle with the design of the memorial for Peter, which fully occupied her until after the end of
the war. Her grief and resulting introspection during this time led her to renounce all violence, all war, and
to accept the possibility of evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, change. She therefore refused to support
the Communist Party, despite her sympathy for their cause, because of their acceptance of violence as an
agency of social change. Instead, she became an early supporter of the Womens International League for
Peace and Freedom, as well as a member of the International Workers Aid organization.

Hinz, Kthe Kollwitz: Graphics, Posters, Drawings, p. xix.

From 1914 to 1916 Kthe produced very little. Still, she continued to be recognized for her work.
In 1916, she became the first woman elected as a juror of the Berlin-based New Secession artists group,
three years after being elected secretary of the group. For her fiftieth birthday in 1917, the Cassirer Gallery
in Berlin put on an enthusiastically received retrospective of her works. After the wars end, in 1919, she
was named a member and professor in the Prussian Academy of Arts, heading the graphic arts department
from 1928 until forced to resign from the Academy altogether by Adolf Hitler upon his ascension to power
in 1933.
The assassination of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg in early 1919 triggered another
turning point in Kthes career. At the request of Liebknechts family, she visited his corpse in the morgue.
The sketches from that visit evolved into the Memorial Sheet to Karl Liebknecht, showing workers paying
final homage to their fallen leader. Kthe started developing the print, intending to reproduce it as an
etching, then as a lithograph. Her dissatisfaction with the results from both methods led her to explore the
woodcut technique. This became her primary working medium for the Memorial Sheet, as well as for her
next two print cycles, War (1917-1923) and The Proletariat (1925), and quite a bit of other graphic work
during the 1920s.
She did not give up the lithograph, however, contributing her talents to various relief and anti-war
organizations by producing artwork for leaflets and posters. During 1924 alone, she produced four of her
most famous poster images: The Survivors for the International Trade Union Federation, Germanys
Children Are Starving! for the International Workers Relief Organization , Bread! for the Help by the
Artists group, and Never Again War! for the 1924 Central German Youth Day in Leipzig. These powerful
images have been used again and again through the years, first for those causes in which Kthe so
passionately believed by now, later being co-opted by the Nazi Party among others for purposes which she
deplored.
If not for the extreme economic hardships and disastrous social conditions around them during the
1920s, family life for Kthe Kollwitz during this time would have been relatively content. Her remaining
son Hans married Ottilie Ehlers, a Berlin printmaker, in 1920, and over the next decade they gave Kthe
four grandchildren: Peter in 1921, twins Jutta and Jrdis in 1923, and Arne-Andreas in 1930. A visit to
Belgium in 1926 provided her the opportunity to view the future site of the Mourning Parents memorial. In

1927, shortly after her 60th birthday, the Kollwitzes accepted an invitation to visit the Soviet Union on the
occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Russian Revolution.
Mourning Parents was finally completed in 1931, and the plaster models were displayed at the
Prussian Academy to great acclaim. A year later they had been rendered in granite, and in late July Kthe,
Karl, and Hans went to Belgium to oversee their installation at the cemetery in Dixmuiden.
The early 1930s saw the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist Party. Kthe was
forced to resign from the Prussian Academy of Arts, and her works were systematically removed from
public view and exhibition. Except for the blacklisting, and a single interrogation by the Gestapo, in 1936,
after an interview by a Russian journalist, the Nazis did not otherwise actively persecute Kthe. Although
she and Karl were urged to emigrate, they could not bring themselves to do so. Their entire life, their
family, was in Germany, and in Germany they would remain.
Although banished from the public view, Kthe continued to work in a private studio near her
home, producing the last of her great print cycles, Death, between 1934 and 1937. Death, as a subject, had
long held a great fascination for her, so much so that she recognized the compulsion toward this subject as
early as 1927. Yet she managed to portray Death in these images without a trace of sentimentality or
romanticism.2 Other than this, she did little more graphic work, choosing instead to focus her attention on
sculpture. Fewer than two dozen of her sculptures are known, almost all dating from the 1930s and early
1940s.
The death of Karl Kollwitz in 1940 was not unexpected, since both and Kthe had been in failing
health for several years. From the day that he died, the former hiker and mountain climber Kthe walked
with the aid of a cane. She also finally moved her studio into her home. Her sorrow was compounded two
years later when her oldest grandson, Peter, was killed in the fighting in Russia.
Kthes final works during this period, though few in number, retain the powerful messages of her
earlier pieces. Her final lithograph, Seed Corn Must Not Be Ground, shows clearly her belief in the futility
of war and the waste of the sacrifice of the young to violence. Her final self-portrait, in 1943, shows an
aged and weary woman gazing beyond that which the viewer can see, to the inevitable approach of death.

Nagel, Kthe Kollwitz, p. 77.

By 1943, conditions in Berlin were so bad that Kthe was forced to leave her home of over fifty
years. She took refuge, first in Nordhausen with sculptor Margret Bning, then a year later on the estate of
Prince Ernst Heinrich of Saxony at Moritzburg, outside of Dresden. The Prince was an ardent fan of Kthe
and a collector of her works, and felt an obligationto this great, unique German artist to assist her
and make her remaining months as pleasant and comfortable as possible.3 Here, at Moritzburg, she died on
April 22, 1945, in the company of her twin granddaughters Jutta and Jrdis. Her body was cremated, and
the ashes originally interred at the small cemetery in Moritzburg. After the end of the war, her ashes were
moved to the family plot in Friedrichsfelde cemetery in Berlin. There her remains were buried alongside
her husband, under a headstone bearing a bronze relief which Kthe herself had created a decade earlier.
The Weissenburgerstrasse building, where Kthe lived for more than fifty years and which was
destroyed by the Allied bombings six months after she left Berlin, is now a small park, Kollwitz Place, on
Kthe Kollwitz Strasse. The main feature of the park, opened in 1950, is a large statue of Kthe Kollwitz,
created by sculptor Gustav Seitz, on a stone pedestal. The statue shows Kthe as an elderly woman, in a
pose very like her final self-portrait, seated with her head thrust forward, one hand holding a pencil, the
other touching a portfolio. Yet despite the heavy, almost foreboding image depicted in the statue, the
neighborhood children seem to find a friendly sort of monument, for they clamber familiarly into the great
stone lap.4 How appropriate this seems, for an artist who focused so much of her life and her work on the
joys and sufferings of children and their families.

3
4

Klein and Klein, Kthe Kollwitz: Life in Art, p. 157.

Klein and Klein, p. 165.

The Work of Kthe Kollwitz

Though Kollwitzs primary reputation is as a graphic artist, she began her career as a painter and
ended it as a sculptor. Her finished works combine a mastery of technique with powerful, often startling
and disturbing, imagery to bring across her powerful messages. Her overall themes are primarily social and
political, yet with an emotional quality to their expressiveness that saves them from being strident. Kollwitz
lived and worked among the people whose struggles she depicted in her art, and so was able to portray
them with truth and a discerning eye that won her the enmity of the ruling powers more than once.
Kollwitz herself acknowledged the influence of a number of artists on her work. Her first sight, as
a girl, of the works of Rubens enthralled her. Obviously the work of Max Klinger played a great role in
leading her to graphic arts. Ernst Barachs woodcuts provided her with a new direction at a time in her life
when she became dissatisfied with her chosen techniques. However, the authors that Kollwitz read so
voraciously were a far more significant influence on her work, particularly in the choice of subject matter.
Zolas novel Germinal inspired the first student piece of Kollwitzs to bring her peer recognition.
Hauptmanns play The Weavers, depicting the Silesian revolt of 1844, was the starting point for her first
great print cycle, A Weavers Rebellion. Other authors of the time such as Ibsen, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky
undoubtedly are reflected in her work. But the great German poet Goethe remained her favorite author and
a major influence throughout her life, despite her disagreement with his social and political attitudes.
Kollwitzs primary works were produced during the Modernist/Expressionist eras. She is often
classified as part of the German Expressionist movement, though this is mostly an accident of timing and
geography. Her work actually bears little resemblance to the typical works produced by other German
Expressionist artists, most notably Paula Modersohn-Becker (with whom she is occasionally compared
despite the immense differences in style between the two women). The socialist content of much of her
work falls well outside the Modernist ideal of individual artistic freedom, while she herself regarded
Expressionism as a studio form divorced from the social reality of the current times.5 Naturalism, Realism,
Modernism, Expressionism she drew from all of these movements, but transcended each and every one to
form her own unique style.

Chadwick, Women, Art, and Society, pp. 291-292.

Kollwitz was not interested in abstraction, but in depicting the reality of her subjects and their
emotions. She made use of color minimally, and that only during a brief span around the turn of the
century. The stark contrasts of black and white in her work compound the impact of the images themselves.
Her interest was in people, their sufferings and joys and longings. Instead of finding beauty in
physical attractiveness, she found it in human intensity, in the physical reflection of the labors, the efforts,
the cares and concerns, the loves, losses, and griefs that made up the lives of real and ordinary people.6
Many of her works were images of herself, and her ongoing series of over fifty self-portraits covering a
forty-five year span provides a visual chronology of the artist herself as well as a reflection of her world.
Other images were drawn from the urban proletariat of Knigsberg and Berlin with whom she was so
familiar. While Kollwitz was not alone among artists of her period in depicting the working proletariat, she
was unique in that many of the figures in her works are women, often mothers with children. In her forties,
she found herself using actual models less and less (except for her self-portraits), drawing instead from her
memories for the images of people in her later work.
Perhaps because of Kollwitzs emphasis on realism in the people depicted in her work, her
frequent use of a skeleton to symbolically represent Death, from the Weavers Rebellion cycle throughout
her work to the Death cycle, is startling and powerful. In doing so, she remained true to an iconographic
tradition dating from medieval times and retaining its power to this day.7
For Kollwitz, the message in her work was to focus awareness on the social ills of the day: war,
poverty, starvation, grief, struggle. Her socialist, feminist, eventually pacifist philosophy is clear in her
choice of subject matter. Like Barlach and Grosz she was essentially a Gothic artist, in whom idealized
beauty and balance were subordinated to emotional expressiveness.8 Her purpose was awareness, and she
achieved that through a simplicity, both of medium and of image, that made her work accessible to the
viewer. Regrettably, this accessibility led to later devaluation of her work by critics and historians.9 Even
with this diminishment, her message lives on. In the PBS series The Great War, Jay M. Winter of
Cambridge University states:

Klein and Klein, p. 11.

Hinz, p. xix.
8
Zigrosser, Prints and Drawings of Kaethe Kollwitz, p. xiii.
9
Chadwick, p. 287.
7

10

So the fundamental vision that I think Kathe Kollwitz provides us, is of the impossibility of
forgetting and the impossibility of letting go of the guilt; for the responsibility of the old, for the
sacrifice of the youngIn addition, I think what Kathe Kollwitz captured in her art was the sense
that the fundamental problems of war and peace were not resolved into victors and vanquished
only into the living and the dead. She captures the view that nobody won the First World War.
There were just survivors. And, that universality of message, the simplicity of that message,
escapes from political notation.10
Tracing the development of Kollwitzs artistic vision is most effective in the context of her life, as
discussed in the previous section. In her early works, particularly in A Weavers Rebellion, there is a
complexity of image based on an attention to detail. This facilitates Kollwitzs interpretation of this real,
historical event. Detail gradually disappears in her later works, until the Death cycle and her final
lithograph, Seed Corn Must Not Be Ground. In these images, there is a paring-down to the pure essence of
the image no background, no scenery, no superfluous details. There are only the players and their
interaction with one another; the rest of the world is irrelevant.
Kollwitzs progression through techniques mirrors the evolution of her vision. Early images
particularly those rendered as etchings, allow the tiny details of realism to show through. As her mastery of
the lithographic technique matured, she found a medium that allowed the presence of detail when it was
needed and omitted it when it detracted. After World War I, her vision shifted. As Carl Zigrosser states,
The aim of realism to capture the particular and accidental with minute exactness was abandoned for a
more abstract and universal conception and a more summary execution. It is a logical development in an
artists career,11 In woodcut and then sculpture she moved into techniques that captured only the
essential image. In a sense, the eventual resolution of her artistic vision could truly be summed up as less
is more.

10
11

Winter, The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century.
Zigrosser, p. xiii.

11

A Weavers Rebellion
A Weavers Rebellion is the first of Kollwitzs great print cycles, and established her reputation as
Germanys premier graphic artist at the turn of the century. In speaking of A Weavers Rebellion, critic and
friend Otto Nagel states, I do not think it is an exaggeration to state that if Kthe Kollwitz had done
nothing else in her lifetime besides the Weavers, this work alone would have earned her a place in the
history of art.12
Consisting of six prints (the first three, lithographs, and the remaining three, etchings), it depicts
the revolt of the Silesian handloom weavers in 1844 against the oppression of their masters, and the revolts
quick suppression by Prussian military forces. Though Gerhard Hauptmanns play The Weavers provided
Kollwitzs initial inspiration for the cycle, Nagel clearly states that she studied the relevant literature
thoroughly before beginning even the preliminary sketches for the images.13
It is difficult to discuss the individual images of A Weavers Rebellion in isolation from one
another. Normally, in a print cycle, all of the prints are made with the same technique. In this cycle,
however, Kollwitz found it necessary to render the first three images as lithographs since she did not
believe her etching skills up to the standard necessary to achieve her desired results. This gives the first
three images a shadowy, mood-provoking14 feel. By the time she reached the remaining three prints,
however, she felt that her etching had matured and was capable of catching the images as she wished them
seen. In particular, the first two of these three images have a very pictorial and precise look to them as a
result. The use of the two different techniques gives the series a dissonance that actually compounds the
effect of the images seen as a whole.
The first two images in the cycle, Poverty and Death, provide the background and the impetus
respectively for the impending revolt. The third image, Conspiracy, depicts the clandestine planning for the
revolt, while the next two images, March of the Weavers and Riot,15 show the revolt in full swing. Finally,
in End, the devastating aftermath appears in the lifeless bodies of the rebellious workers.

12

Nagel, p. 26.
Nagel, pp. 25-26.
14
Klein and Klein, p. 33.
15
Prelinger entitles this print Storming the Gate, while Nagel lists it as Attack of the Weavers.
13

12

In the four interior scenes (Poverty, Death, Conspiracy, and End), Kollwitz makes masterly use of
light and shadow to bring the focus onto a single individual in each case. For Poverty, it is the face of the
starving child, with the shadowy shapes of the handweavers tools receding into the background. In Death,
it is, of course, Death himself alongside the blankly staring child. The father in this image stands off to one
side, with the darkness of his image mirroring the suffering, helpless darkness of his soul. Conspiracy
brings the main focus to one of the four conspirators, the man on the right, as he pounds his fists on the
table to emphasize the point he is making to his attentive audience. Finally, in End, the viewers gaze is
drawn to the woman standing just inside the door, with weary grief on her face and anger in her clenched
fists. Only after observing her does attention turn to the other shadowy figures in the room.
In these four prints, Kollwitz relies heavily on hatching for the depth and texture of the shadows.
Shapes define the images; few individual lines are seen. Many of the shapes seen in the background are
merely those mundane tools of the handweavers trade, yet their massive presence in the shadows lends an
ominous feeling to the cramped, almost claustrophobic interior scenes.
The two exterior scenes, March of the Weavers and Riot, are the two highly pictorial etchings. In
both, action and motion is the focus. In the former, the rhythm of the purposeful tread of the men as they
resolutely stride toward their goal contrasts with the slower pace of the woman, carrying a sleeping child on
her back, by their side. The determination of the workers is clear, their destination evident. The latter shows
a smooth, ordered rhythm of movement in the stooping of the women to pick up the rocks torn from the
pavement, the handing off of the rocks to the men, who then fling them at the owners mansion through the
bars of the ornate iron gate.16 That gate is the focal point of the image, just as it is the focal point of the
attack, with the full attention of the workers focused on, and through, it.
These two images rely far more on line as a visual element than do the other four images. One
example is the intricate detail of the gate in front of the owners house in Riot. Shading and hatching is still
an important visual element, however, particularly in the clothing of the workers.
In all six prints of A Weavers Rebellion, Kollwitzs life-long focus on people is evident, as people
are the primary emphasis of each image. Every element of the print directs attention to the players in the

16

Nagel, p. 29.

13

scenes. Even in Riot, where the energetic focus is on the gate to the owners house, the viewers attention is
drawn through the attackers to the gate.
The flow of light and dark from the shadows of the first images, to the focused yet dimmed light
of Conspiracy, through the bright optimism of the revolt suddenly crashing back into the shadowed despair
of End mirrors the emotion of the rebellion itself, from despair to optimism back to even deeper despair.
The movement through the cycle is further emphasized by the gradual increase in size of the prints as they
move through the cycle, from the small 6 1/8-inch by 6 inch Poverty to the 9 5/8 inch by 12-inch End.
Each individual image in the cycle is complete in and of itself artistically. However, when viewed
in sequential order, the full impact of the cycles message is most dramatically perceived. As is usual with
Kollwitzs work, the visual and compositional elements serve an aesthetic function; yet their primary
purpose is to focus the viewers attention on her message.

14

Selbstbildnis, 1919
Kollwitz used herself as a model for her work throughout her life, and her self-portraits are some
of her most expressive and moving work. For her, most of the self-portraits were works in which she could
try out and perfect techniques. For others, they are a window into the heart and mind of the artist herself.
I originally attempted to copy Selbstbildnis (Self-Portrait), c. 1921, a relatively small (8 inches
by 10 inches) etching, touched with blank ink and white on paper. The image of the fifty-four year old
Kollwitz clearly shows the suffering and anguish of the past decade, especially the pain of the loss of her
son in World War I. Kollwitzs weariness is evident in her face and her pose, yet so is the strength of
character that allowed her to hold to her ideals and continue to produce her work until very near the end of
her life. Unfortunately, I was unable to reproduce an acceptable (to me) copy even with pencil.
I then chose to replicate Selbstbildnis (Self-Portrait), c. 1919. The original image is a lithograph,
13 5/8 inches by 11 inches, showing Kollwitz in profile. The copy presented here is done in Cont
crayon, as the closest thing available to lithographic crayon, and is slightly smaller than the original.

15

Derived Works
As Kthe Kollwitzs self-portraits are the images that I find most moving and inspiring of all her
work, I have chosen to present three self-portraits as my series of drawings inspired by her life and work. I
did not attempt to replicate exact poses or expressions, but rather allowed the images that I have studied
throughout my research for this project to inspire three interpretations with my own face. I did use
Kollwitzs customary sober, solemn mien in all three images, as that is not an unusual expression for me.
The first image, done in compressed charcoal, is a three-quarter profile. This is not unlike
Selbstbildnis, 1921 (K. 133), though without the head resting on the hand.
The second image is done in black Cont crayon with a very few touches of white Cont crayon
for highlights. The pose, with the head resting on the hand, is reminiscent of several of Kollwitzs selfportraits, particularly a crayon drawing from 1924 and a charcoal drawing of 1925.
The third image is another three-quarter profile, in vine charcoal. I wanted to do a full profile for
one of the drawings but could not get a mirror set up so that I could get a good profile in a location where I
could do the drawing. I had also thought about a pen and ink drawing, but the first two attempts did not suit
me.

16

Bibliography
Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society, revised edition. New York, New York: Thames and
Hudson, 1997.
An Exhibition of Graphic Works by Kthe Kollwitz. Exhibition catalog. The Minnesota Museum of Art, St.
Paul, Minnesota, 1973.
Hinz, Renate, ed. Kthe Kollwitz: Graphics, Posters, Drawings. New York, New York: Pantheon Books,
1981.
Kearns, Martha. Kthe Kollwitz: Woman and Artist. New York, New York: The Feminist Press, 1976.
Klein, H. Arthur and Mina C. Klein. Kthe Kollwitz: Life in Art. New York, New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1972.
The Landauer Collection of Kthe Kollwitz, Prints and Drawings. Storrs, Connecticut: The University of
Connecticut Museum of Art, 1968.
Nagel, Otto. Kthe Kollwitz. Greenwich, Connecticut: New York Graphic Society, Ltd., 1971.
Prelinger, Elizabeth, et. al. Kthe Kollwitz. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1992.
Schaefer, Jean Owens. Kollwitz in America: a Study of Reception, 1900-1960. Womens Art Journal
(Spring/Summer 1994): 29-34.
Timm, Werner. The World of Art: Kthe Kollwitz. Berlin, Germany: Henschelverlag Kunst und
Gesellschaft, 1980.
Winter, Jay M. Jay M. Winter, Cambridge University on Kathe Kollwitz. The Great War and the
Shaping of the 20th Century: Interviews. http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/interviews/winter13.html.
Zigrosser, Carl. Prints and Drawings of Kaethe Kollwitz. New York, New York, Dover Publications, 1969
(originally published by George Braziller, 1951).

17