Kathe Kollwitz
Kathe Kollwitz
KätheKollwitz,was a German artist, who worked with drawing, etching, lithography, woodcuts, painting, printmaking, and sculpture. Her most famous art cycles, including The Weavers and The Peasant War, depict the effects of poverty, hunger, and war on the working class. Despite the realism of her early works, her art is now more closely associated with Expressionism. Kollwitz was the first woman elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionSculptor
Date of Birth8 July 1867
CountryGermany
Bisexuality is almost a necessary factor in artistic production; at any rate, the tinge of masculinity within me helped me in my work.
It seems to me nowadays that the most important task for someone who is aging is to spread love and warmth whenever possible.
I am afraid of dying-but being dead, oh yes, that to me is often an appealing prospect.
As in everything else, I find that age is not good for much, that one becomes deafer and less sensitive. Also, the higher up the mountain you climb, the less of a view you get. A mist closes in and cheats you of the hoped-for and expected opportunity to see far and wide ...
To this day I do not know whether the power which has inspired my works is something related to religion, or is indeed religion itself.
Pacifism simply is not a matter of calm looking on; it is work, hard work.
For me the Koenigsberg longshoremen had beauty; the Polish jimkes on their grain ships had beauty; the broad freedom of movement in the gestures of the common people had beauty. Middle-class people held no appeal for me at all.
Culture arises only when the individual fulfills his cycle of obligations. If everyone recognizes and fulfills his cycle of obligations, genuineness emerges. The culture of a whole nation can in the final analysis be built upon nothing else.
No longer diverted by other emotions, I work the way a cow grazes.
I am in the world to change the world.
The development of the national spirit in its present form leads into blind alleys. Some condition must be found which preserves the life of the nation, but rules out the fatal rivalry among nations.
Genius can probably run on ahead and seek out new ways. But the good artists who follow after genius - and I count myself among these - have to restore the lost connection once more.
I want to cultivate the seed that was placed in me until the last small twig has grown.
It is my duty to voice the suffering of men, the never-ending sufferings heaped mountain-high.