Kathe Kollwitz. Käthe Kollwitz, née Schmidt, was a German artist who worked with 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 work class. Despite the realism of her early works, her art is now more closely associated with Expressionism.
Kollwitz was the first woman to not only be elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts but to also receive honorary professor status. Kollwitz was born in Königsberg, Prussia, the fifth child in her family.
Her father, Karl Schmidt, was a radical Social democrat who became a mason and house builder. Her mother, Katherina Schmidt, was the daughter of Julius Rupp, a Lutheran pastor who was expelled from the official Evangelical State Church and founded an independent congregation.
Her education and her art were greatly influenced by her grandfather's lessons in religion and socialism. Recognizing her talent, Kollwitz's father arranged for her to begin lessons in drawing and copying plaster casts when she was twelve. At sixteen she began making drawings of working people, the sailors and peasants she saw in her father's offices. Wishing to continue her studies at a time when no colleges or academies were open to young women, Kollwitz enrolled in an art school for women in Berlin. There she studied with Karl Stauffer-Bern, a friend of the artist Max Klin
Her most famous art cycles, including The Weavers and The Peasant War, depict the effects of poverty, hunger and war on the work class. Despite the realism of her early works, her art is now more closely associated with Expressionism.
Kollwitz was the first woman to not only be elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts but to also receive honorary professor status. Kollwitz was born in Königsberg, Prussia, the fifth child in her family.
Her father, Karl Schmidt, was a radical Social democrat who became a mason and house builder. Her mother, Katherina Schmidt, was the daughter of Julius Rupp, a Lutheran pastor who was expelled from the official Evangelical State Church and founded an independent congregation.
Her education and her art were greatly influenced by her grandfather's lessons in religion and socialism. Recognizing her talent, Kollwitz's father arranged for her to begin lessons in drawing and copying plaster casts when she was twelve. At sixteen she began making drawings of working people, the sailors and peasants she saw in her father's offices. Wishing to continue her studies at a time when no colleges or academies were open to young women, Kollwitz enrolled in an art school for women in Berlin. There she studied with Karl Stauffer-Bern, a friend of the artist Max Klin
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