Käthe Kollwitz was a German artist who worked with painting, printmaking (including etching, lithography, and woodcuts), and sculpture. Her most famous art cycles, including The Weavers and The Peasant War, depict the effects of poverty, hunger, and war on the working class. We continue Women's History Month with one of her famous lithographs, thanks to the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden.
This sheet is one of the artist's last lithographed self-portraits. Her frontally drawn face completely fills the narrowly framed picture. The finger on the forehead only hints at Kollwitz's typical gesture of the head supported in the hand. Kollwitz' self-portraits are the mirror images of her soul. The "visual form of a soliloquy" as she called them, provide intimate insights into the phases of her life.
P.S. Kollwitz is Germany's greatest female artist (there are THREE museums dedicated solely to her work). Read more about Käthe Kollwitz. <3