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
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.
Fifty years ago in America, law schools had virtually no women students or professors, and their attitude then is much like that in the film industry today. The prevailing opinion was that women don't want to be lawyers and, anyway, they wouldn't be good at it; they're too emotional. But there was a movement that forced schools to change, and nobody today says women aren't capable lawyers. We're saying the same thing. Let women in, we'll show you we can do it.
I thought I was a revolutionary and was only an evolutionary.
I can always paint very well with my eyes, but with my hands it doesn't always work out.
Old ideas die hard. We've had thousands of years of women having almost no rights. Parts of the world are in a struggle toward very basic human rights for women, and most of the world isn't even there yet. And it's going to take a long time to change these attitudes.
Every war carries within it the war which will answer it. Every war is answered by a new war, until everything, everything is smashed.
Where do all the women who have watched so carefully over the lives of their beloved ones get the heroism to send them to face the cannon?
One day, a new ideal will arise, and there will be an end to all wars. I die convinced of this. It will need much hard work, but it will be achieved… The important thing, until that happens, is to hold one's banner high and to struggle… Without struggle there is no life.
I was put in this world to change it.
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.