Between two world wars, the rise of the Nazis and the Holocaust, the first half of the 20th century was a dark time in Europe — even more so for the place where much of the madness began, Germany. And perhaps as much as any artist, Käthe Kollwitz chronicled that era with a body of work that speaks to the tragedy of war and the suffering of the poor.
A printmaker and sculptor whose work included lithographs, woodcuts and etchings, Kollwitz (1867-1945) also staked out a leading position as a female artist — she became the first woman to win membership at a prestigious Berlin art academy — and her anti-war work also challenged the traditional image of the German mother as “Mutti,” a woman proud to offer her sons to battle to further the nation’s goals.
An exhibit at the Smith College Museum of Art takes a broad look at Kollwitz’s career and places it in historical context. “Mothers’ Arms: Käthe Kollwitz’s Women and War” uses selections from her diary to offer a deeper understanding of her approach to art and her views of German society.
In addition, the exhibit includes other German art from that period, such as Nazi propaganda posters, to show how national leaders tried to influence women during the era.
Kollwitz had a distinctive, expressionistic style, all somber tones and stark realities, rather than the pastoral landscapes and still lifes that many female artists of that era were associated with.
Some pieces featured dim, cramped bedrooms where underfed children and their unemployed parents huddled for warmth, or depicted women mourning their lost sons.
Later in her career, such as in a series of woodcuts called “Krieg” (“War”), her images became even darker and increasingly abstract.
“It was really important to show the different layers, to look at the time when she was working,” said Henriette Kets de Vries, the exhibit’s curator and the manager of SCMA’s Cunningham Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings and Photographs. “We didn’t want to just have universal images of grief.”
The Smith College Museum, which was the first U.S. museum to purchase any of Kollwitz’s prints (in 1913), has 52 of her pieces in all, and about 30 of them are part of the show, with other material on loan from different institutions, including Wellesley College. Last fall, Wellesley also hosted an exhibit on Kollwitz, using items from the Smith collection.
Kets de Vries says her interest in curating the Smith show was sparked by her visit three years ago to a museum in Berlin dedicated to Kollwitz’s work; given that the centenary of the start of World War I was at hand, Kets de Vries thought a new exhibit would be timely, especially given Kollwitz’s artistic response to the war.
And, she noted, “Students really respond to her work,” referring to the Smith students who visit the Cunningham Center for their classes. “It’s very dark, but it’s also quite beautiful.”
Indeed, Kollwitz made no secret of her artistic muse. She noted in her diary that her parents had once asked her why she only showed “the dark side” of life in her work. “I could not answer this,” she wrote. “The joyous side simply did not appeal to me.”
Kollwitz, born in the former Königsberg in eastern Germany — since the end of World War II, the city has been known as Kaliningrad and is part of Russia — grew up in a liberal, upper-middle class household where her father in particular recognized her artistic talent and interest; she studied painting in Berlin and Munich in the mid- to late 1880s.
Her interest soon turned to prints and etchings, however, and when she moved to a working-class district of Berlin with her husband, Karl, in 1891, she began profiling people in her neighborhood and other workers she met.
One of the pieces at the Smith show, “Arbeitslosigkeit” (“Unemployment”), depicts a woman with a weary face lying in bed, two small children and an infant lying by her, and a desperate-looking man seated alongside the bed.
Like much of her work, it’s a somewhat minimalist sketch that nevertheless conveys both an ominous mood and great sympathy for the poor.
Kollwitz considered herself a socialist and believed socialism was the best means for addressing the gross inequalities wrought by turn-of-the-century capitalism. But she was also hesitant to thrust herself into political debates and often struggled with self-doubt.
As she wrote in her diary of her early years as an artist, “I constantly looked right and left to see how people were interpreting my actions.”
Whatever reservations Kollwitz had about public reaction to her work, she remained firmly on the side of the downtrodden.
The Smith exhibit offers a number of pieces from two significant early series of lithographs and prints, “A Weavers’ Uprising” and “The Peasants’ War,” both of which focused on historic revolts by European laborers against brutal working conditions.
The former series impressed many critics and appeared slated to win a top award at a major 1898 Berlin art exhibition — until Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II called it “gutter art,” believing it was not in tune with his vision of German strength and national purpose. Officially, he maintained Kollwitz did not deserve the award because she was a woman.
As an accompanying catalog to the exhibit notes, Kollwitz was somewhat ambivalent about Germany’s entrance into World War I, as she hoped the conflict might lead to dramatic change at home, perhaps even revolution and the introduction of socialism. But the death of her youngest son, Peter, on the battlefield in October 1914 turned her into a committed pacifist and also sparked her most iconic work.
For much of the rest of her career, Kollwitz produced a variety of images of mothers protecting children, mourning lost sons, or simply grieving or remonstrating against war.
The seven black-and-white woodcuts she made in the early 1920s for her “Krieg” series, on display at the exhibit, have elements of Christian imagery and speak to the despair of war in the ghostly faces of their abstract figures.
Perhaps the most memorable of the series is “Die Mutter” (“The Mothers”), in which a group of women have formed a sort of circular wedge, their arms wrapped around one other as they peer out fearfully; beneath their protecting arms the faces of a few children peek out.
Kets de Vries says one of Kollwitz’s lasting accomplishments is the way she took her personal grief over the loss of her son “and created a kind of universal image of loss and the horror of war. She wanted to make a difference with her art, to bring about social change.”
She would also create two memorable stone statues, of a grieving mother and father, that today stand in a cemetery in Belgium where her son is buried; the Smith exhibit has a large photo of the work. And all through the turbulent 1920s, Kollwitz also created posters and other work that documented Germany’s political turmoil, food shortages, runaway inflation and recession.
The ascension of the Nazis in 1933 signaled the end of her status in Germany as a leading artist; she was dismissed from her position at the Berlin art academy, her work and politics deemed unacceptable. Kets de Vries says the Gestapo also threatened to send Kollwitz to a concentration camp in 1936 — she was almost 70 at the time — when she made comments in a Russian newspaper article that were considered anti-Nazi.
But her legacy lives on today, Kets de Vries notes. An enlarged verison of one of her last sculptures, “Pietà,” a black alloy figure of a grieving but reflective older woman with the body of her son in her lap, was selected by former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl as a key component of a Berlin memorial, “Neue Wache,” that’s dedicated to the victims of war and dictatorship.
“I think [Kollwitz’s] work speaks to us on so many levels,” she said. “I’m really pleased that we’ve been able to bring her and the history of her era to a new generation of students and the public.”
Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.
“Mother’s Arms: Käthe Kollwitz’s Women and War” can be seen at the Smith College Museum of Art through May 29. For information, visit www.smith.edu/artmuseum.