Käthe Schmidt Kollwitz: Social Injustice
Käthe Schmidt Kollwitz, a German artist, used several techniques to express her feelings toward social injustice. She was an expressionist and perfectionist who portrayed her life through images. She devoted her work including sculptures to humanity, detailing historic rebellions against social injustice and creating memorable images of Berlin’s working-class women, mothers and children and the victims of modern warfare. With the use of drawings, etching, lithography, woodcuts, paintings, printmaking, and sculptures, the world around her and her environment came to life in her art. Subjects of war and poverty was Kollwitz’s style of images of women grieving the dead. In some of her works of bereaved mothers tell much of the forbidding story,
in prints entitled “Woman with Dead Child” and “Call of Death”. Even though the work is titled “Woman with Dead Child” and not noted as a mother, the woman is holding the child with such grief that one might assume that it is the child’s mother. Later the print “Woman with Dead Child” became a sculpture depicting a seated mother with a limp child, head tilted back and the mother clutching the child’s body to her chest creating a scene of mourning.
Kollwitz created memorable self-portraits in pencil, charcoal, clay and various graphic techniques. She used pencils to design structures and charcoal with a variety of rich tones to create distinctive effects. Through her work she demonstrates pain and suffering including trauma of war. Expressions of the faces, the quality of the lines, the texture and the lack of color capture the deep emotions. A variety of thick and thin lines were used to create texture, form and expression. Lines and shading was used to create texture on the faces to add form. The absence of color intensifies the emotions portrayed in her work. The negative space along the edges draws attention to the main figures of the artwork.
German, Kaiser Wilhelm II, considered Kollwitz’s work too dark, ugly and politically inspiring. In viewing her earlier artwork, it portrayed death and protection. Figures come to life in their faces and hands which communicates feelings and emotions. “Call of Death” describes death visiting a helpless man being unable to find hope. “Death needs only to extend a hand”.
Though Kollwitz studied both painting and printmaking, she turned totally to print in the 1890. Impressed by Max Klinger’s prints from 1840, Kollwitz produced more etchings and lithographs instead of focusing on paintings. Another technique used to create large expanses of texture and tone was addition of a so-called “mechanical grain” described as exhibiting “unmistakable rows of tiny, parallel dots like in her work, “Outbreak”. When she became married to Dr. Karl Kollwitz, they lived in one of the poorest areas of Berlin. She became more aware of how families lived in the area. After 1910, she changed her style from being influenced by the exhibition of the expressionist art and she worked less realistic way and was part of the German expressionism art movement. In 1914, her youngest son, Peter, died in World War I and because of that she began creating work with themes of a mother protecting her children. She later lost her grandson to World War II which contributed to her political sympathies. In 1932, she portrayed herself and her husband in “The Grieving Parents” sculpture which is a memorial to her fallen son whom died in World War I. She used hands and faces to illustrate feelings of the bodies underneath shapeless clothing. It was a representation of her remarkable ability to render the most painful human emotions. In 1933, Nazis forced Kollwitz to leave her job and removed her work from the German museums. The series included lithographs reliefs and smaller sculptures.
One of the primary functions of art is to interpret the subject matter at hand. Art has become more meaningful since the beginning of the course. Art simply means telling the truth about what you see. It tests the idea of what it is for, an image to be true or real. The different hues and shades having meaning and express emotions. Art serves as information that attempts to persuade the observer toward a particular viewpoint or action. The influence of visual images has frequently been used to persuade multitudes of people to accept beliefs, take action or follow leaders. Technology has changed art and the way it is being understood. In some cases technology is taking the passion that is normally seen in each stroke of the artist.
in prints entitled “Woman with Dead Child” and “Call of Death”. Even though the work is titled “Woman with Dead Child” and not noted as a mother, the woman is holding the child with such grief that one might assume that it is the child’s mother. Later the print “Woman with Dead Child” became a sculpture depicting a seated mother with a limp child, head tilted back and the mother clutching the child’s body to her chest creating a scene of mourning.
Kollwitz created memorable self-portraits in pencil, charcoal, clay and various graphic techniques. She used pencils to design structures and charcoal with a variety of rich tones to create distinctive effects. Through her work she demonstrates pain and suffering including trauma of war. Expressions of the faces, the quality of the lines, the texture and the lack of color capture the deep emotions. A variety of thick and thin lines were used to create texture, form and expression. Lines and shading was used to create texture on the faces to add form. The absence of color intensifies the emotions portrayed in her work. The negative space along the edges draws attention to the main figures of the artwork.
German, Kaiser Wilhelm II, considered Kollwitz’s work too dark, ugly and politically inspiring. In viewing her earlier artwork, it portrayed death and protection. Figures come to life in their faces and hands which communicates feelings and emotions. “Call of Death” describes death visiting a helpless man being unable to find hope. “Death needs only to extend a hand”.
Though Kollwitz studied both painting and printmaking, she turned totally to print in the 1890. Impressed by Max Klinger’s prints from 1840, Kollwitz produced more etchings and lithographs instead of focusing on paintings. Another technique used to create large expanses of texture and tone was addition of a so-called “mechanical grain” described as exhibiting “unmistakable rows of tiny, parallel dots like in her work, “Outbreak”. When she became married to Dr. Karl Kollwitz, they lived in one of the poorest areas of Berlin. She became more aware of how families lived in the area. After 1910, she changed her style from being influenced by the exhibition of the expressionist art and she worked less realistic way and was part of the German expressionism art movement. In 1914, her youngest son, Peter, died in World War I and because of that she began creating work with themes of a mother protecting her children. She later lost her grandson to World War II which contributed to her political sympathies. In 1932, she portrayed herself and her husband in “The Grieving Parents” sculpture which is a memorial to her fallen son whom died in World War I. She used hands and faces to illustrate feelings of the bodies underneath shapeless clothing. It was a representation of her remarkable ability to render the most painful human emotions. In 1933, Nazis forced Kollwitz to leave her job and removed her work from the German museums. The series included lithographs reliefs and smaller sculptures.
One of the primary functions of art is to interpret the subject matter at hand. Art has become more meaningful since the beginning of the course. Art simply means telling the truth about what you see. It tests the idea of what it is for, an image to be true or real. The different hues and shades having meaning and express emotions. Art serves as information that attempts to persuade the observer toward a particular viewpoint or action. The influence of visual images has frequently been used to persuade multitudes of people to accept beliefs, take action or follow leaders. Technology has changed art and the way it is being understood. In some cases technology is taking the passion that is normally seen in each stroke of the artist.