Käthe Kollwitz


Käthe Kollwitz is regarded as one of the most well known women artists of her time, and is still quite famous for her work. She was born in 1847 into a facility with rather progressive parents. Her father who was trained as a doctor but worked in construction recognized her artistic talent early on and encouraged it. She was able to study in her early ears and even attend schooling for women artists. She realized that she wasn’t a fan of color, but she was a master of lighting, movement and line and so she focused on charcoal, lithography, and sculpture. She married a doctor who worked things out so that he could sometimes be helping in the home so that Käthe could continue to pursue her already successful art career. They had three kids and she believed that having children helped her art and her art helped her be a better mother. That is a beautiful sentiment to me. Expressionist themes of motherhood and children, protection, and pacifism were all over her later works—her earlier realism works being more focused on the working class. We can correlate these later areas of focus with the world wars, especially because she lost her son Peter. She became very anti-war and even designed a poster for that movement. Nazis threatened her but she being famous, threatened suicide so they left her alone.

She remains today one of the most famous artists of all time. Her art is moving and has so much depth. She used her art as her voice and her combination of realism and expressionism evokes powerful emotion in the eyes of the viewer. I especially loved her sculpture: mother with child over her shoulder, before 1917. The mother has her child in a loving embrace with her face turned inward to her child. You can feel the love that she has for children and it evokes the maternal desire to protect them. She is really getting across with her art the charge that people have to love and care for children who are “seeds for sowing”. She also shows the exhaustion of motherhood which is so refreshing in my eyes, compared to the typical depictions of nude allegorical women in art. Her art feels real and relatable and deep and she tries to make change and that is why I feel that she is such an amazing artist in her own right.

I am not the only one who thinks she is amazing so she has actually been commemorated fairly well. Obviously she has this museum of her art that I visited but she also has a plaza where she lived named after her. She also has a big sculpture with a mother protecting children somewhere. Also her art is still circulating snd as we have traveled around Europe I have seen her art in a few places. She is well known, well liked, and well remembered.

Comments

  1. Sam RichardsonJune 11, 2024 at 5:43 PM

    Anna, this was seriously such an inspiring post! I think you detailed Käthe Kollwitz's life so beautifully and the way you described her art was so detailed, I loved it! Käthe Kollwitz is such a renound artist so it is important to remember that she had to face many obstacles to make her contribution. As we have talked about for the past 2 months, most female painters at this time were not taken seriously, so it is even more amazing that Käthe Kollwitz has gotten the recognition and fame that she deserves. This gender bias in art has decreased significantly since the time of Käthe Kollwitz, but it still exists and it is our job to put an end to it.

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  2. Sophie CandlandJune 11, 2024 at 10:12 PM

    Great post, Anna! I absolutely loved the way you talked about Käthe Kollwitz, this was awesome to read! She received credit and the recognition that she deserved, which is something that wasn’t common back then. Her work and persistence paid off, and made a lasting impact on woman in the art world!

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  3. Kaia HathawayJune 12, 2024 at 5:30 PM

    I loved your post, Anna! First off, I think you really described her and her work really nicely. You mentioned that she married someone who would let her work on her art, which seemed to be uncommon, especially for her time. So, I think this is important to note as we discuss how other were treated in this time, both positive and negative circumstances. Also, like you said, she seemed to be treated fairly well given that she was a female artists, and it was rare that women artists were taken seriously. Or even women as a whole. I think Kollwitz has received the recognition she deserves. But that doesn't mean we should stop at that. We still need to continue commemorating her and other female artists and their work.

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  4. Meg KiehlJune 14, 2024 at 2:55 PM

    Anna, I really liked this post. I like how you talked about the emotion she evokes in her work. I think this is what has made her work so famous. I feel that Berlin has commemorated her very well which shows how much the German people value art and art by women, especially Kathe Kollwitz. This is just another example of what a cultural capital would appreciate and want to showcase.

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