I really don’t know why it has taken so long for me to see the work of Käthe Kollwitz. I first saw this sculpture in Vienna and went to find out more.
I like her work because it in unsentimental, has strong elements of composition, and it makes me think. She mostly chose the poor as her subject and presents them in all their wretchedness but often with the innocence of young children as a counterpoint.
I suppose that I was not aware of her work because of any or a mixture of the following:-
She was a woman and, still, women are underrepresented in so many fields,
She didn’t go to Paris and join the avant garde,
Her subject matter is not the sort that attracts plaudits and people rushing to hang it at home,
Her socialist stance meant that the Nazi’s withdrew her work and her teaching post, and finally,
She died just after the end of WWII in what became East Germany; behind the Iron Curtain.
I the borrowed the first book on her I came across, Otto Nagel’s book Käthe Kollwitz, but, sadly, it is all in black and white. However, it seems that there other books out there and a tour of her sculpture in Berlin, which is a place we’ve been meaning to visit!
Apologies for the lack of stuff of late but I hope to be more productive on this front over the rest of the summer.
