Käthe Kollwitz

Expressionist artist Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945) became the foremost artist of social protest in the 20th century and an eloquent advocate for victims of war, poverty, and injustice. Born in Königsberg, East Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia), she grew up in a liberal middle-class family and studied painting in Berlin and Munich. Impressed by the prints of Max Klinger, she devoted herself primarily to graphic art after 1890, producing etchings, lithographs, woodcuts, and drawings. In 1891 she married Karl Kollwitz, a doctor who opened a clinic in a working-class section of Berlin. There she witnessed firsthand the miserable conditions of the urban poor.

Her first important works were two print series: "Weavers' Revolt" (c. 1894-98) and "Peasants' War" (1902-08). Both depict the effects of poverty, hunger, and oppression on working people. The death of her youngest son Peter in battle in 1914 profoundly affected her art. She expressed her grief in cycles of prints treating themes of a mother protecting her children and a mother with a dead child. These powerful black and white images remain some of the most moving anti-war art ever created.

Kollwitz was the first woman elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts and the first to receive honorary professor status. She also created sculpture, including a granite monument for her son (1924-32), now a memorial near Ypres, Belgium. An enlarged version of her sculpture "Mother with her Dead Son" was placed in 1993 at Berlin's Neue Wache as a monument to war victims. The Nazis expelled her from exhibiting but appropriated her imagery for propaganda. Her Berlin apartment was destroyed in World War II, with great loss of work. She died two weeks before Germany's surrender. Museums dedicated to her work exist in Berlin, Cologne, and Moritzburg. The Museum of Modern Art holds significant collections of her prints.