Kathe Kollwitz
Kathe Kollwitz
KätheKollwitz,was a German artist, who worked with drawing, etching, lithography, woodcuts, painting, printmaking, 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. Despite the realism of her early works, her art is now more closely associated with Expressionism. Kollwitz was the first woman elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionSculptor
Date of Birth8 July 1867
CountryGermany
Fifty years ago in America, law schools had virtually no women students or professors, and their attitude then is much like that in the film industry today. The prevailing opinion was that women don't want to be lawyers and, anyway, they wouldn't be good at it; they're too emotional. But there was a movement that forced schools to change, and nobody today says women aren't capable lawyers. We're saying the same thing. Let women in, we'll show you we can do it.
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.
It is my duty to voice the suffering of men, the never-ending sufferings heaped mountain-high.
I want to cultivate the seed that was placed in me until the last small twig has grown.
Genius can probably run on ahead and seek out new ways. But the good artists who follow after genius - and I count myself among these - have to restore the lost connection once more.
I am in the world to change the world.
Look at life with the eyes of a child.
The development of the national spirit in its present form leads into blind alleys. Some condition must be found which preserves the life of the nation, but rules out the fatal rivalry among nations.
Recently I began reading my old diaries. Back to before the war. Gradually I became very depressed. The reason for that is probably that I wrote only when there were obstacles and halts to the flow of life, seldom when everything was smooth and even. ... As I read I distinctly felt what a half-truth a diary presents.
Men without joy seem like corpses.
Culture arises only when the individual fulfills his cycle of obligations. If everyone recognizes and fulfills his cycle of obligations, genuineness emerges. The culture of a whole nation can in the final analysis be built upon nothing else.
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.
Pacifism simply is not a matter of calm looking on; it is work, hard work.
For me the Koenigsberg longshoremen had beauty; the Polish jimkes on their grain ships had beauty; the broad freedom of movement in the gestures of the common people had beauty. Middle-class people held no appeal for me at all.