Books

Kathe Kollwitz
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MARTHA KEARNS is an art historian, playwright, and critic.

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Kathe Kollwitz

Woman and Artist
Martha Kearns

Afterword by Muriel Rukeyser

A generation after her death, German artist Kathe Kollwitz is winning a reputation as one of the great graphic artists of the twentieth century. Concentrating on the more "democratic" media—especially etchings, lithographs, posters, and woodcuts, as well as sculpture and bronze reliefs—Kollwitz always created for the people, rather than for the upper class collector. Unlike the voluptuous odalisques so often depicted by male artists, Kollowitz's women are joyous or grief stricken, thoughtful or shielding mothers; forlorn, pregnant, widows; tender friends; prostitutes; militant pacifists or revolutionaries in action. In her sensitive narrative, Martha Kearns establishes Kollwitz's contributions to western art, and especially to women's art. This original paperback is generously illustrated with many striking, seldom-seen reproductions from private collections, assembled in one volume for the first time.

"In Kollwitz's work . . . it is the women who confront the crises head on: they brave war, poverty, homelessness, their husbands' unemployment, servitude, widowhood, sexual abuse, and their children's hunger. In the darkest despair, the women continue to support the lives of others."

—Martha Kearns

"While I drew, and wept along with the terrified children I was drawing, I really felt the burden I am bearing. I felt that I have no right to withdraw from the responsibility of being an advocate. It is my duty to voice the sufferings . . . the never-ending sufferings heaped mountain-high."

—Kathe Kollwitz