After the end of the First World War, the 1920s were marked by the consequences of the war and political upheavals in Germany. Käthe Kollwitz, in 1919 the first woman to be appointed as a full member of the Prussian Academy of Arts, engaged in many actions against hunger, war and poverty. Posters such as Heraus mit den Gefangenen (Out with the Prisoners), Nie wieder Krieg (Never Again War), or Brot! (Bread ), as well as other commissioned works, occupied a large space in her artistic output. She wants to “have an effect” with her art. At the same time, she processed her own wartime experiences in the seven-sheet cycle War, for which she adopted the technique of woodcut.
In her art during this decade, however, Käthe Kollwitz was also concerned with the happy coexistence of mother and child, harmonious family scenes, and playful depictions of children. As a grandmother of four, she found numerous suggestions in her own environment for intimate encounters between mother and child, which the artist realized in sculpture in her largest group of figures, Mother with Two Children, among others.
