Käthe Kollwitz
German, 1867-1945

Arbeiter Frau im Profil nach links
(Working Woman in Profile facing Left),
1903
Lithograph on Japan paper, 31/50

Museum purchase
1996.6.2

Despite the strength of her social conscience, Kollwitz somehow made political idealism intimate. Her women, mothers, and workingclass people possess the enigma of powerful graphic darkness, like the images of Klinger. She is obsessed with hands and faces. She believed in the work of her hands, both as artist and as mother. In Kollwitz, the anxious faith of the artist fuses with the desperate protective strength of the mother. This is not a self-portrait; but Kollwitz' own face has been described as the face of a seeress, frighteningly knowing, yet gentle. One is reminded that the medieval feminist Christine de Pizan praised female seers or sibyls: "Foremost among the ladies of sovereign dignity are the wise sibyls, most filled with wisdom." With Kollwitz, women artists command their own image of womanhood in a way which almost creates a new kind of imagery for power, empathically appropriate for our apocalyptic century.


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