Come close to Käthe Kollwitz and look at her face. She engaged in self-critical dialogues with herself in each of her creative periods. She thus created numerous self-portraits, which you will encounter in the exhibition among her other works.
More than 100 self-portraits can be found in Käthe Kollwitz’s oeuvre, from which this early self-portrait stands out in particular. With pen and ink, the artist sketches herself facing the viewer in a cheerful mood – it is the only self-portrait known to date in which she depicts herself laughing.
The sheet was created in 1888/89, before her marriage to the doctor Karl Kollwitz. She signed it in the middle with Schm., which stands for her maiden name Schmidt. The three-quarter portrait is finely worked out in the head area with the pen and the shoulder area with the brush roughly, the rest of the body remains sketchy.
The artwork was possibly created during her time as a student in a local school for women artists in Munich. As a woman, she was barred from studying art academically.
Even though the themes which Käthe Kollwitz often addressed in her work — grief, loss, poverty, hunger or war — suggest otherwise: she was a sunny personality who laughed often and with pleasure.
This quality is highlighted by a quote from her sister Lisbeth Stern:
“[…] the image of Käthe from her earlier days, when she was still famous because of her laughter with her big mouth and healthy teeth – her streaming comradeship that never reckoned — her cheerfulness at parties and her talent for dressing up so wonderfully (…)”.
Käthe Kollwitz, Letters of Friendship and Encounters. With an appendix from the diary of Hans Kollwitz and reports on Käthe Kollwitz, Munich 1966, p. 143.
The etching Self-Portrait at a table from 1893 is an early self-portrait of the artist. It shows the interior of the living room at home in what was then Weißenburger Street (today Kollwitz Street), where it was created. Kollwitz sits under a kerosene lamp, the light accents of which she uses to illuminate her face and workplace in a painterly way. The art piece also appeared in 1889/90 as part of the magazine Pan. As a young wife and mother, and without a studio of her own, her work options in the apartment in Prenzlauer Berg were limited. This, amongst other reasons, influenced her turn towards printmaking. Printmaking allowed her to pursue her artistic activities in a space-saving manner.
Käthe Kollwitz created this colored lithographic self-portrait at the end of 1902. It was influenced by her first trip to Paris in 1901. The artist, who is otherwise better known for her prints in strict black and white, experimented with color for a while inspired by her experiences in the French metropolis.
Käthe Kollwitz created this self-portrait in 1924. For this woodcut, the artist shortened the piece of wood, and therefore the self-portrait, by almost half. This resulted in a stronger focus on the face. The original woodcut depicted her as a monumentally staged seated half-figure. On May 14, 1924, Kollwitz wrote in her diary:
“I am working on small things for publishers. The greeting of Elisabeth and Mary and the self[bild] with a raised hand. Both are woodcuts.”
“Sculpting myself, my face mask. At first it seems like a piece of cake. Little by little I see that even that is darn hard.”
Käthe Kollwitz, entry July 1926, diaries, p. 616
For this expressive self-portrait from 1934, Käthe Kollwitz chose an unusually close-up perspective. In context of the Nazi rule at the time, this self-portrait takes on a very special poignancy. Due to her forced resignation from the Prussian Academy of Arts in February 1933, she was banned from the public sphere, and her opportunities to “make an impact” were limited. This is also indicated by an entry in her diary in 1936: “One sinks into silence within oneself.”
In this half-figure self-portrait from 1938, Käthe Kollwitz depicts herself unadorned as an aged woman scarred by life. A reproduction of the self-portrait hung in the studio of the sculptor Gustav Seitz, as seen in historic photographs. This inspired his larger-than-life bronze sculpture of Kollwitz, which has stood on Kollwitzplatz in the Prenzlauer Berg district of East Berlin since 1961.
