'I have never been able to carry out any work coolly. On the contrary it is done, so to speak, with my own blood.’
Käthe Kollwitz

I recently attended a fine exhibition of female German artists from the early decades of the twentieth century. (‘Making Modernism’ is at the Royal Academy, London until 12 February.)

I was particularly taken with the work of Käthe Kollwitz, a committed socialist who preferred print to painting because it was a more accessible, democratic medium. Kollwitz presented us with aching images of humanity, frail and fragile, raw and vulnerable. She portrayed struggle, hardship, tragedy and grief. She believed that art could illuminate suffering, and ultimately change the world.

‘I felt that I have no right to withdraw from the responsibility of being an advocate. It is my duty to voice the sufferings of men.’

Käthe Schmidt was born in Königsberg, Prussia in 1867. Her father, a house builder, was a radical Social Democrat and her mother came from a family of strict Lutherans.

‘Middle-class people held no appeal for me at all. Bourgeois life on the whole seemed to me pedantic.'

Educated at the School for Women Artists in Berlin, in 1891 she married Karl Kollwitz, a doctor tending to the poor in that city, and they had two children together. In the family apartment she created etchings, lithographs and drawings of working people and sailors; of destitute weavers and revolutionary peasants.

‘Sorrow isn’t confined to social misery. All my work hides within it life itself, and it is life that I contend through my work.’

Kollwitz was haunted by mortality: the early passing of her younger brother when she was a child; the near death of her elder son from diphtheria; and then the loss of her younger son in the First World War. She had initially supported his wish to enlist and would forever regret it. Afterwards she became an ardent and outspoken pacifist.

'I have received a commission to make a poster against war. That is a task that makes me happy. Some may say a thousand times that this is not pure art.... But as long as I can work, I want to be effective with my art.’

Kollwitz’s trauma is ever-present in her art. A skeletal figure grasps at a mother from behind, as a desperate infant reaches up to her in vain. Death touches a young boy as he sleeps. A woman cradles her deceased child on her knees, her eyes closed in grief.

‘As an artist I have the right to extract the emotional content out of everything, to let things work upon me and then give them outward form.’

There is a strong sense in Kollwitz’s work of the preciousness of life. She focuses, close-up, on tender gestures, on rare moments of intimacy.

A mother presses her baby to her face. Another holds the head of her sleeping child between gentle hands. Two lovers embrace in desperate passion. A couple nestle against each other in silence. This intimacy extends to Kollwitz’s excursion into sculpture. A woman, head bowed, balances her infant on her shoulder, as if to say: this is all that matters.

'Look at life with the eyes of a child.’

There is tenderness too in Kollwitz’s self-portraits. At 22 - with short hair, plain clothes and a sturdy hand gripping a lapel - she seems ready to take on the world. At 67 she looks worn out, her brow lined, her lips pursed, her eyes dark with disappointment.

'No longer diverted by other emotions, I work the way a cow grazes.’

Kollwitz had reason to look depressed in the later image. The previous year, 1933, the Nazi government had forced her to resign from her position as professor at the Prussian Academy of Arts. Her work was removed from museums and she was banned from exhibiting.

'I do not want to die... until I have faithfully made the most of my talent and cultivated the seed that was placed in me until the last small twig has grown.’

In 1936 Kollwitz was visited by the Gestapo, and threatened with arrest and deportation to a concentration camp. Protected by her international reputation, she survived. In 1943 her house was bombed, and many drawings and prints were lost. She died in Moritzburg, near Dresden, just 16 days before the end of the war.

'One day, a new ideal will arise, and there will be an end to all wars. I die convinced of this. It will need much hard work, but it will be achieved… The important thing, until that happens, is to hold one's banner high and to struggle… Without struggle there is no life.’

The silent intensity of Kollwitz’s work may seem a million miles away from the world of commercial communication. Ours is a field of big bold statements, grand themes and trivial messages. But perhaps we should recognize the power of human intimacy: the quiet word, the gentle touch, the sensitive gesture. And like Kollwitz we should be fuelled by a willingness to struggle and an appetite for change.

‘I was put in this world to change it.’

Time for a festive break.
Have a restful Christmas. 
Next post will be on Thursday 5 January 2023.
See you on the other side, I hope.

'My dear acquaintance, it's so good to know you,
For strength of your hand
That is loving and giving.
And a happy new year,
With love overflowing,
With joy in our hearts,
For the blessed new year.
Raise your glass and we'll have a cheer
For us all who are gathered here.
And a happy new year to all that is living
To all that is gentle, kind, and forgiving.
Raise your glass and we'll have a cheer.
My dear acquaintance, a happy new year.’

Regina Spektor. 'My Dear Acquaintance (A Happy New Year)’ (P Horner / Peggy Lee)

No. 400