Käthe Kollwitz - Self-Portrait

1983_11.jpg

Käthe Kollwitz (German, 18671945), Self-Portrait, 1919, lithograph on Japan paper, Art Collections Fund, Thomas E. Brittingham Fund, and Linda Nichols Fund purchase, 1983.11

Käthe Kollwitz drew this portrait for the Berlin Free Secession exhibition in early spring as she developed her print memorial to Karl Liebknecht, a longtime friend murdered by rightwing Freikorps troops during Berlin’s January revolt, and a sculpture for her son killed at the beginning of World War I. Her current writings voiced concern about the role of art in troubled times and about her own sight and aging; just elected to the Prussian Academy, she doubted whether she possessed the discipline to work after learning of the government’s March slaughter of 1,200 Berlin strikers. Hoping that the violence would end with the war and New Year, Kollwitz had feared Liebknecht’s advocacy of continued revolution. She defined her face with an energetic contour, letting the untouched white suggest a concentration of energy in the forehead and hair as her exhausted eye, cheek, and neck merge with the darkened ground.

Barbara C. Buenger

Catalogue
Käthe Kollwitz - Self-Portrait