A lifelong commitment to championing the rights of the underprivileged people and an extraordinary ability to express human suffering in artistic terms characterize the work of Käthe Kollwitz. As part of a politically progressive, middle-class family in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia), Käthe Schmidt was encouraged to develop her skills in painting and drawing. By age fourteen she was taking private classes with local artists, since the Königsberg Academy barred female pupils. She later studied in Munich and Berlin.

In 1891, Schmidt married the physician Karl Kollwitz and later had two sons. The family settled in a working-class neighborhood of Berlin, where her models and her husband’s patients were the urban poor. Intrigued by both the narrative potential and the democratic qualities of the graphic arts, which could be produced in inexpensive editions, Kollwitz decided to become a printmaker.

For the next fifty years she produced dramatic, emotion-filled etchings, woodcuts, and lithographs—generally in black and white but sometimes including touches of color. Although Kollwitz’s wrenching subjects and virtuoso technique soon made her work popular throughout Germany and the Western world, they also generated controversy. In 1897, for example, Kaiser Willhelm prevented Kollwitz from receiving a gold medal at the Berlin Salon because of the seditious nature of her subject matter. Kollwitz also encountered difficulties during the Nazi era. In 1933, she was forced to resign her position as the first female professor appointed to the Prussian Academy (in 1919); soon thereafter she was forbidden to exhibit her art.

During her final years, Kollwitz produced bronze and stone sculpture, embodying the same types of subjects and aesthetic values as her work in two dimensions. Much of her art was destroyed in a Berlin air raid in 1943. Soon thereafter Kollwitz evacuated to Moritzburg, a town just outside Dresden, where she died two years later at age seventy-eight.

Activist, Professor, Teacher

Berlin
Munich

Académie Julian, Paris, France (1904) Private lessons, Munich, Germany (1888-1889) Private lessons, Königsberg, Germany (1886, 1881-1882) Zeichen-und Malschule des Vereins der Künstlerinnen und Kunstfreundinnen, Berlin, Germany (1885-1886)

friend of Maria Slavona friend of Emma Jeep friend of Margret Böning student of Karl Stauffer-Bern student of Rudolf Mauer student of Karl Stauffer-Bern student of Emil Neide student of Ludwig Herterich influenced Sue Coe influenced Lea Grundig

First appointed female professor, Prussian Academy of Art, Berlin, Germany (1919) Fellowship in Graphic Arts, Villa Romana, Florence, Italy (1906) Small Gold Medal, Deutsche Kunstausstellung, Dresden, Germany (1899)

Freie Kunstausstellung, Berlin, Germany (1893)

The Washington Print Club Thirtieth Anniversary Exhibition: Graphic Legacy
Four Centuries of Women's Art: The National Museum of Women in the Arts
Kathe Kollwitz: A Self-Portrait
Preserving the Past, Securing the Future: Donations of Art, 1987-1997

Käthe Kollwitz, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, USA (1992) Käthe Kollwitz: In Celebration of the 125th Anniversary of the Artist’s Birth, Galerie St. Etienne, New York, NY, USA (1992) Berner Kunstmuseum, Bern, Switzerland (1946)

Moritzburg (died at)