Käthe Kollwitz’s work reminds me of Goya’s. Her heavy black prints emphasize the gravity of war. It affects everyone. Kollwitz prints center soldiers, parents, mothers, wives and children. Once again, I’m reminded the art is for the suffering. Kollwitz was creating these in real time over the course of the First World War.¹ They depict her emotions and experiences throughout the war while her brother was fighting. I feel like I haven’t studied an artist who was this close to their content. She was making these, what I’d call antiwar images, in real time. I truly believe her and Goya would have gotten along. The artists worked almost exactly one hundred years apart, however war still caused the same destruction to life. They were both first hand witnesses to the suffering of war.

Her sheets have the following titles: The Sacrifice, The Volunteers, The Parents, The Widow 1, The Widow 2, The Mothers, and The People. Kollwitz acknowledges that no one goes untouched by the death of war. She dedicated a print for every one of the people. She used a woodblock to make her prints. That’s why some of the etches may look familiar to Goya’s work. They both made incisions to achieve whitespace. I love the result. The technique does so much in such a small space. 


¹ “Series ‘War’ - Overview - Käthe Kollwitz Museum Köln.” Series "War" - Overview – Käthe Kollwitz Museum Köln, 2020, www.kollwitz.de/en/series-war-overview.