| |
|
|
|
|
|
||
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |||||
|
|||||
|
|||||
|
Käthe Kollwitz—Artist, Mother, Pacifist
Käthe Kollwitz is undoubtedly one of the most important women of the past centuries. She is one of the few female artists who was critically acclaimed and gained fame during her lifetime and whose extensive body of work is viewed as timeless still today. Born in Königsberg on July 8, 1867, Käthe Kollwitz grew up in a middle-class, liberal-minded family, which enabled her to choose an artistic path. Her husband, Dr. Karl Kollwitz, a physician practicing in a poor quarter of Berlin, also supported her in her aspiration to pursue her passion for art while fulfilling her role as a doctor’s wife and mother of two sons. Born into a period of political upheaval between the 19th and the 20th centuries, Käthe Kollwitz and her art are inextricably linked to the tumultuous events of this historical era. The human and social hardship of that generation manifests itself as a theme throughout Kollwitz’s entire body of work. Although originally educated as a painter, Kollwitz found her preferred medium of expression in drawing, etching, lithography, and woodcutting. In her later work, she turned to sculpture.
Thematically, Käthe Kollwitz limited herself to one subject, the human being, on whom she focused her observations and her interest. She had a particularly emotional interest in women of the working class. Kollwitz depicted their strength and beauty in simple forms; they are “reduced to the essential.” Guided by female intuition, she gave the woman as mother and protecter a central place in her work. After the death of her son Peter in World War I, Kollwitz became a pacifist. The works from this period often show mothers protecting their children from the cruelties of war. In 1936, during the period of the National Socialist regime, Kollwitz was indirectly banned from exhibiting her work. Her works were removed from public collections, and she no longer received any official commissions. With one of her last sculptures, Mother with dead son (Pietà) (1937/38), another intensely personal work that was also intended to commemorate the sacrifice of many young volunteers who died in the war, Kollwitz succeeded in giving her creation an added accent. An enlarged reproduction of the sculpture is now prominently located in the interior of the memorial site Neue Wache in Berlin and has become an iconic image of the human cost of war. Today, when war and hunger continue to plague humanity, her works resonate as both a warning and a clarion call. Kollwitz died in Moritzburg, near Dresden on April 22, 1945. July 5, 2007 Links
|
|
 Culture & Life   Life
Newsletters
 Printer-Friendly
Page
Email This Article |
||
|
|||||
|
|||||
