Käthe Kollwitz

Käthe Kollwitz is a German Expressionist artist, printmaker, sculptor and draftsperson whose powerful and committed work constitutes an overwhelming testimony on human suffering, war and social injustice. Coming from a Prussian socialist family, she develops a profoundly humanist art characterized by expressive graphics with dramatic contrasts, dense and emotional compositions, and visceral empathy for the oppressed - workers, mothers, starving children, war victims. Her monumental engraved cycles The Weavers' Revolt (1893-1897) and The Peasants' War (1902-1908) reveal her exceptional technical mastery and radical social commitment, making her a pioneer of political and feminist art. Traumatized by the death of her son Peter during World War I, she creates pacifist works of heartbreaking intensity - mothers protecting their children, war memorials, appeals against war - that transcend the political to reach the universal. First woman elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts then persecuted by the Nazis who label her a degenerate artist, she embodies the figure of the artist witness and moral conscience of her time, leaving a graphic body of work of unequaled expressive power and human compassion.