Käthe Kollwitz - Buy or sell works
8 July 1867, Königsberg (Germany) - 22 April 1945, Moritzburg (Germany)
Käthe Kollwitz was a German graphic artist, sculptor and painter primarily known for her socio-critical woodcuts, etchings and lithographs.
Born in Königsberg in 1867 to a preacher, Kollwitz began her studies at the Academy for Female Artists in Berlin under Karl Stauffer-Bern once she had finished her schooling. After this she moved to Munich, where she was taught by Ludwig Herterich.
At the beginning, she was primarily influenced by etchings by Max Klinger. She had two sons, Hans and Peter, from her marriage to the physician Karl Kollwitz.
The “Weavers’ Uprising” dating from 1893, a cycle of three lithographs and three etchings, is one of the artist’s most well-known works.
In 1904, she travelled to Paris, where she met Julian August Rodin and Théophile Alexandre Steinlein at the Académie’s sculpture class.
In addition to her career as an artist, Kollwitz was a Professor at Prussia’s Academy of Arts, and Head of the Masterclass in Graphics, between 1919 and 1933. Her series of woodcuts titled “War and Proletariat” were shown in 1927 as part of her visit to Moscow.
In 1931 she exhibited figures for the anti-war monument in Roggevelde (Belgium), which she had been working on since 1914. She had suffered loss in both wars: her son died in the First World War, and her grandson perished in Russia in the Second World War.
Kollwitz was politically active, and many of her works deal with socio-critical topics. She was a member of artists’ associations such as the German Federation of Artists and the Berlin Secession.
Kollwitz was let go from the Prussian Academy in 1933, and was also subject to an exhibition ban.
In 1944 the artist died in Moritzburg, her apartment in Berlin having been completely destroyed by bombing.
Works by Käthe Kollwitz have enjoyed success at Dorotheum auctions for many years. On 25 November 2014, her bronze cast “Die Klage”, after a design from 1938/40, sold for € 11,430.