
Käthe KollwitzGerman, 1867–1945May one see it?
Minneapolis, United States
It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.
Kollwitz reworked the motif of the bereaved parents multiple times as both a print and a sculpture. She planned the sculpture to serve as a memorial to her son Peter who was killed in World War I. She struggled with this image and wrote in her journal, Yet again I am not finished with the War series. Done the sheet 'Parents' over again. Suddenly it looks entirely bad to me. Far too bright and hard and distinct. Pain is totally dark. Yet in the end, Kollwitz succeeded in capturing the grief of the bereaved parents that she knew only too well.
Minneapolis Institute of Art
1918–1919
The Working Council for Art and the Liebknecht memorial sheet
A committed socialist and pacifist, eventually attracted to communism, she expressed her political and social sympathies in her woodcut memorial sheet for Karl Liebknecht and in her involvement with the Arbeitsrat für Kunst, part of the Social Democratic government in the first few weeks after the war.
1919
The first woman professor at the Prussian Academy of Arts
In 1919 she was appointed professor and elected a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts, the first woman to hold the post. Membership brought a regular income, a large studio and a full professorship.
1919–1925
Destroys the first monument and begins again
In 1919 she destroyed the monument to her son, and in 1925 she began again.
1924
Her work at the “First General Exhibition of German Art”
In 1924 her work was shown in Moscow at the “First General Exhibition of German Art”.