Kathe Kollwitz: Life In Art

by Mina C. Klein, H. Arthur Klein, Kathe Kollwitz

This is the first biography in English of the remarkable German artist Kathe Kollwitz. For more than 60 years Kollwitz expressed through her work the ideas that obsessed the plight of the oppressed, the causes of peace and social justice, the joys and sorrows of motherhood, and the mystery of death. Married in her youth to a doctor, who bore him two songs, one of whom was killed in World War I. Her earliest major success..a series of prints called 'Weavers,' based on a revolt of Silesian weavers as dramatized in a play by Gerhart Hauptmann...caused her to become known as the 'socialist artist.'

She continued all her life in her social concerns, and in World War I produced some of her most powerful works to express her anti-war feelings. Nevertheless, her outward life was not untypical of an ordinary housewife, and it is from her experience as a mother that much of her most expressive work was formed. Her last years were spent in the nightmare of Hitler's Germany where she was forbidden to teach and where her work was labeled 'degenerate.'

This book brings together her life and art, showing through reproductions of her drawings, etchings, woodcuts, lithographs, and sculpture how each contributes toward and understanding of this complex woman, one of our century's most moving artists.

183 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Henry Powell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I gained a lot from reading this. Käthe Kollwitz was a pristine worker, she was clearly a person of immense sensitivity and worth to the world. The value in her art was not so much something serving, the art does not act as consumption (it is foreign to all that—the way I view art as a person). No, her vision is utterly communicated through her art. Heart shattering is what I think she communicated to her students that art must be, must be for. This is evident to the letter in all of her work, it is quite universal to acknowledge the obvious. It is the obvious gift we all have the opportunity to enjoy by being alive. This book was very good, well-written, I’m so glad it found its way around to the used book store in San Rafael.

[Rachael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating - Kathe Kollwitz has all but slipped into some sort of forgotten vortex accessible only to art students with a passing chapter in art history or women artists. She is not a brave and amazing artist "for a woman", she is a great artist amidst great political turmoil in Germany/Austria. This book is not a memoir or biography but a 'curatorial' look at the context and art of Kathe Kollwitz. It touches upon her role a mother, wife, woman, and political & 'non political' artwork. One thing that this book features well is her doubt - her doubt that she ever 'found herself' when one never does - it is the art that helps one through the struggle and process the horrors and wonders of life.