Selbstbildnis, 1915 by Käthe Kollwitz

Käthe Kollwitz is arguably one of the best-known women artists from the 20th century. She worked in the mediums of printmaking, drawing, painting, and sculpting. Her works centers around the depiction of women, the working class, and periods of political and social upheaval around the times of WWI and WWII. These elements are captured most through her depictions of herself in the numerous portraits she created over the course of her career – six of which are included in the Petteys collection of women artists.

Each variation serves as a reflection of the particular climate she found herself in at the given point in which the portrait was created. Take for example the contrast in facial expression Kollwitz captures from her etching portraits from 1912 to 1915. The face in the earlier portrait has a softness to it, where the eyes are relaxed and the mouth rests in a neutral position. The portrait from 1915 was created shortly after the death of her youngest son, Peter, who was killed in October of 1914. In contrast with her portrait from 1912, her expression is more jarring as the eyes look pained and the mouth has a subtle downturn to its corners creating more of a frown than in the previous image.

Her later woodcut portraits, from 1923 and 1924, align with the time she was working on her War series in which she abandoned her previous techniques in etching and moved towards creating woodcuts which were far more minimal with expressive crosshatching. Here, her portraits, while they are depictions of herself, convey a sense of heavy emotion the mothers from the war era carried – almost as the images carry a sense of visual empathy for losing one’s child. In the portrait from 1923, Kollwitz positions herself in such a way that the viewer is forced to look at her face to face. Her eyes carry a pain emphasized by the dramatic, sharp cuts created from the woodblock and the stark contrast from the solid black print and the bright white paper.

The final portrait in the collection from 1933 shows a significantly aged profile of Kollwitz. By this time, Berlin was fully under Nazi regime which led to countless more turmoil including forcing Kollwitz to step down from her beloved position within the Prussian Academy of the Arts. During this time Kollwitz began work on her Death series – which would be the last series she would create during her career. The weight Kollwitz has carried over her years is reflected as she returns to etching for her 1933 portrait, where her face falls and posture is more hunched almost as though she is truly being weighed down by the burdens she has borne.

The early portrait in this collection from 1912 to the latest from 1933, Kollwitz captures through depictions of herself how the climate around her effected not only her life, but the lives around her as well. - Erin Lascot

Selected Bibliography:
Witkovsky, Matthew S., ed. Sarah Charlesworth: Stills. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2014. Exhibition catalog.

Kearns, Martha, Kathe Kollwitz: Woman and Artist. (Old Westburry, NY: The Feminist Press, 1976), 133.