WORK OF THE WEEK: KATHIE KOLLWITZ, WOMAN WITH A DEAD CHILD, 1903

The German artist Kathie Kollwitz (1867-1945) produced some of the most extraordinary art of the 20th century, and established herself in a world dominated by male artists, as a forceful female voice creating a powerful, unforgettable aesthetic vision centred on women and the working classes. Primarily a printmaker, she  was born into a progressive household in Konigsberg –in the eastern most edge of the Prussian empire-now in the modern day Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, on the borders of Poland and Lithuania

She was the daughter of a prosperous and politically radical businessman and the granddaughter of a Lutheran pastor-so from childhood she was consumed by issues of social justice.

For families with daughters at this time, the fear was they would remain unmarried, and so there was this push to have some sort of fallback. Kollwitz  was encouraged to learn how to draw-to be a TEACHER-as a means of supporting herself. In 1919 she became the first female professor at the Prussian Academy of Art. Actually Kollwitz's  father thought she PARTICULARLY needed this fallback as he did not believe she was pretty enough to marry. She did marry, her husband was a doctor in a working class area of Berlin, giving her first hand experience of the social costs of industrialisation. At a time when female artists were expected to produce floral paintings and still life, Kollwitz produced harrowing images of deprivation, suffering and grief.

In Woman with Dead Child, the mother grasps the lifeless body of her child….an image of such unbearable emotion. Kollwitz wanted to show what poverty and social unrest does to the individual and family.  She took herself and her son Peter as the models for this print- a chillingly prophetic image as her son was to die soon after he volunteered to fight in World War I. When war broke out he wanted to enlist but he needed permission from his father as he was just 17-his father said no- but Kathie persuaded him to let him go as he was so keen. Peter died just 10 days later in the trenches of Belgium. Kathie was overcome with grief and guilt---this was to determine the rest of her work; her creativity and artistic expression  were linked to her  mourning. She also became a fervent pacifist . Not for her the conventional heroic battlefield scenes of men fighting, but rather she showed the impact of war – a man’s war-on the women and children at home-the effects of war on the fabric of the family. A woman’s response to a man’s war- Kollwitz represented the overwhelming sense of personal loss felt by the German population –loss of sons, fathers, husbands, brothers , and lovers; the loss of an entire generation.