Kathe Kollwitz Book Design

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.. Kollwitz Kathe Print Cycles

About

About the Artist

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äthe Kollwitz (1867-1945) created 99 etchings, 133 lithographs, 42 woodcuts, 19 extant sculptures and roughly 1,450 drawings in a career that spanned over half a century, but she is best known for her five print cycles: Revolt of the Weavers (1893-98), Peasant War (1902-08), War (1921-22), Proletariat (1924-25) and Death (1934-37). The artist first came to public attention when Revolt of the Weavers was exhibited at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition in 1898, and her reputation was cemented with the publication of Peasant War in 1908. While her forthright depictions of Germany’s oppressed underclass remained controversial throughout the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Kollwitz flourished in the more liberal climate of the Weimar Republic, receiving wide acclaim for her woodcut series, War and Proletariat, and benefiting from reprints of the two earlier cycles. Death, produced under the harsh constraints of Nazi rule, concluded a lifelong dialogue with the subject.

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Kathe Kollwitz

Due to their remarkable range of themes, techniques and styles, the print cycles have earned Kollwitz a place among the foremost female artists of the twentieth century, and recognition as one of the great printmakers of all time. Like other successful women artists of her generation, she was an outlier.

The dominant artistic movement of her time and place— Expressionism—was decisively masculine in its orientation.

Kollwitz did not belong to this or any other group. Her extraordinary career was made possible by the fortuitous convergence of three trends: the revival of printmaking as a significant art form in Germany; the incipient emancipation of women; and growing support for a more egalitarian social order.

Germany boasted an exemplary printmaking tradition dating back to Albrecht Dürer, but since his time prints had been used chiefly as illustrations and to reproduce works conceived in other mediums. Although the Romantics in the early nineteenth century made an attempt to employ prints for more creative purposes, it was Max Klinger who did the most to revive printmaking as an artistic endeavor in its own right. In his highly influential 1891 treatise Malerei und Zeichnung (Painting and Drawing), Klinger posited that drawing (by which he meant all black-and-white art forms, including prints) was more conducive to the expression of ideas and imaginative fantasies than painting. He insisted that artists engage directly with the printmaking process, rather than assigning the preparation of the plate, stone or block to a technician. Most important, Klinger’s own print cycles served as a model for other artists while simultaneously stimulating the market for such works. A print cycle could be used to depict a narrative sequence of events, or to assemble a body of images more loosely related to a common topic. Kollwitz would use the first approach for Revolt of the Weavers and Peasant War, and the second in her later print series.

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About

Kollwitz once likened her life’s work to “the development of a piece of music. The fugues come back and interweave again and again. A theme may seem to have been put aside, but it keeps returning—the same thing in a somewhat changed and modulated form, and usually richer.” Kollwitz’s principal themes—motherhood and death—give a distinctly feminine twist to the Freudian concepts of Eros and Thanatos. In some respects, Kollwitz seems to have accepted Freud’s then-common view that a “normal” woman sublimates her professional and sexual desires in childbearing.

(That may be why she characterized her artistic ambitions as “masculine” and hid her erotic drawings.) On the other hand, unlike Freud, Kollwitz did not see the Eros/Thanatos dichotomy as a zero-sum game. She believed that, as creatures of conscience, we have the ability to choose life. Her pairing of motherhood with death was a plea to abolish war and oppression for the sake of the children, who embody the future of humankind.

Mother with Child Mutter mit Jungen c. 1933

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Kathe Kollwitz

Self Portrait Lithograph c. 1933

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The Weavers Die Weber (1893-'98) Between the births of her sons --- Hans in 1892 and Peter in 1896 --- Kollwitz saw a performance of Gerhart Hauptmann's The Weavers, which dramatized the oppression of the Silesian weavers in Langembielau and their failed revolt in 1842.

[7] Inspired, the artist ceased work on a series of etchings she had intended to illustrate Emile Zola's Germinal, and produced a cycle of six works on the weavers theme, three lithographs (Poverty, Death, and Conspiracy) and three etchings with aquatint and sandpaper (March of the Weavers, Riot, and The End). Not a literal illustration of the drama, the works were a free and naturalistic expression of the workers' misery, hope, courage, and, eventually, doom. The cycle was exhibited publicly in 1898 to wide acclaim The Weavers became Kollwitz' most widely acclaimed work.

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Kathe Kollwitz

Poverty Lithograph c. 1893-94

Left: March of The Weavers in Berlin Lithograph c. 1897

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Death Lithograph c. 1893-97

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Kathe Kollwitz

Conspiracy Lithograph c. 1893-97

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The End Lithograph c. 1897

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Kathe Kollwitz

Attack Lithograph c. 1895-1897

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Peasant War Bauernkrieg (1902-'08) Kollwitz’s second major cycle of works was the Peasant War, which, subject to many preliminary drawings and discarded ideas in lithography, occupied her from 1902 to 1908. The German Peasants’ War was a violent revolution which took place in Southern Germany in the early years of the Reformation, beginning in 1525; peasants who had been treated as slaves took arms against feudal lords and the church. As was The Weavers, this subject, too, might have been suggested by a Hauptmann drama, Florian Geyer. However, the initial source of Kollwitz’s interest dated to her youth, when she and her brother Konrad playfully imagined themselves as barricade fighters in a revolution. The artist identified with the character of Black Anna, a woman cited as a protagonist in the uprising.

When completed, the Peasant War consisted of pieces in etching, aquatint, and soft ground: Plowing, Raped, Sharpening the Scythe, Arming in the Vault, Outbreak, After the Battle (which, eerily premonitory, features a mother searching through corpses in the night, looking for her son), and The Prisoners. In all, the works were technically more impressive than those of The Weavers, owing to their greater size and dramatic command of light and shadow. They are Kollwitz’s highest achievements as an etcher.

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Kathe Kollwitz

Sharpening the Scythe Etching on Aquatint c. 1903

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The Plowers (Die Pfl端ger) Etching on Aquatint c. 1906

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Kathe Kollwitz

Outbreak Etching on Aquatint c. 1908

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After The Battle Etching on Aquatint c. 1906

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Kathe Kollwitz

Arming in the Vault Copper Etching c. 1906

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The Prisoners Etching on Aquatint c. 1908

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Kathe Kollwitz

War Krieg (1921-'24) In the years after World War I, her reaction to the war found a continuous outlet. In 1922–23 she produced the cycle War in woodcut form, including the works The Sacrifice, The Volunteers, The Parents, The Widow I, The Widow II, The Mothers, and The People. In 1924 she finished her three most famous posters: Germany’s Children Starving, Bread, and Never Again War.

The Sacrifice Woodcut c. 1922

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Left: The Prisoners Etching on Aquatint c. 1908

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The Volunteers Woodcut c. 1922-23

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The Parents Woodcut c. 1923

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Kathe Kollwitz

The Widow I Woodcut c. 1923

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The People Woodcut c. 1922

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Germany's Children Are Starving Lithograph poster c. 1923

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Bread from War Lithograph Poster c. 1924

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Kathe Kollwitz

War Never Again Lithograph Poster c. 1924

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Proletariat Das Proletariat (1924-25)

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n 1925 Kollwitz created a very dark series of woods entitled Proletariat [The Proletariat]. The series was executed quickly–in a single year. In this relatively brief period were telescoped the three major stages of her creative process. The inspiration for a new work came as the tide of nothingness receded and she became filled with energy.

Next came the second stage, “when a real and happy interest exists, and there are no doubts about the work’s essential rightness.” This was the time she cherished most, working surely day by day, at her creative peak: “How wonderful life is at such times.” The last stage followed when the work as under control, well within grasp, but now less a pleasure than a drudgery, for it had to be finished and she felt “driven to complete it.”

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Kathe Kollwitz

In The Proletariat, as in War, the point of view stems from a woman’s experience, this time that of a working-class mother. The subject is tragic: death due to poverty.

In the first frame, Erwebslos [Unemployed], a little girl faces us, wide-eyed with terror, clutching an empty spoon. Her tall, gaunt father clutches his neck, as if his hand were a noose.

Only half of the mother’s face emerges from the black ink, her grim, think-lipped mouth turned down. The second frame, Hunger [Starvation], shows terrified women and children crawling through thick darkness, as Death–a skull– brandishes a lasso over their heads. Kinder sterben, the final frame, is the sharpest and most emphatic of the series.

Stupefied with grief, a mother holds a child’s coffin in her work-muscled hands. Thin, long-knived strokes abstract her features, giving her face the imperishable quality of rock.

With the completion of The Proletariat, as her friend and comrade artist Otto Nagel noted, Kollwitz “had achieved in her art the simplicity only a genius can afford.” It was a genius backed by formidable years in practice: twenty-eight years at etching and lithography; twenty-two years at sculpture; seven years at woodcutting.

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Unemployed [Erwerbslos] Woodcut c. 1925

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Kathe Kollwitz

Starvation [Hunger] Woodcut c. 1925

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The Children Die Woodcut c. 1924

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Kathe Kollwitz

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Death Tod (1934-37)

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eath was one of the most persistent themes in Käthe Kollwitz’s work. It continued to exert an inexorable pull on the artist near the end of her life and served as the subject of this, her final print cycle. Ten years before completing the portfolio, Kollwitz had noted in her diary, “I must do the prints on Death. Must, must, must!” She chose lithography, her preferred technique for creating emotionally powerful images with universal resonance, as the medium, but struggled to shape her ideas, only executing the first five prints in 1934. She added three more lithographs to the series in 1937.

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Kathe Kollwitz

A Mother Stretching Her Hand Out to Death Lithograph c. 1934-37

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Death With Girl on Lap Lithograph c. 1934-37

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Death Seizes the Children Lithograph c. 1934-37

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Death as a Friend Lithograph c. 1934-37

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Kathe Kollwitz

Death Seizes a Woman Lithograph c. 1934-37

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Kathe Kollwitz

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