Portrait of the artist: Käthe Kollwitz


Enlightening exhibition at the British Museum looking at the work of Käthe Kollwitz.

As I went round the show I realised I’d come across her before as part of the Germany exhibition at the museum a couple of years ago. There she featured as the designer of a war memorial and model for an angel figure in a church, destroyed by the Nazi’s but remade as a symbol of recovery. It was therefore fascinating to see more of her work and learn not about her life.

Kollowitz was seen as an innovative print maker and the show included a number of her series of prints starting with “The Weavers Revolt” from 1893. I loved her set from the First World War, made after her son was killed. These were dark moving images.

There was a wonderful case of self-portraits and drawings she did for a satirical magazine. I loved “The Many Silent and Noisy Tradespeople in a Big City” a wonderful, dense  Hogarthian scene.

Closes 12 January 2020

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