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German printmaker Käthe Kollwitz spent her career making etchings, woodcuts and lithographs about poverty, labour and grief, often centred on working-class women. In 1919 she became the first woman elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts. Her son Peter was killed in action in 1914, and grief for him shaped her later work.

Käthe Kollwitz

Art

The story behind the card

Peter was 18 when he was killed in Flanders in October 1914, in the first months of the First World War. Kollwitz began planning a memorial almost at once, destroyed her first version in 1919 and started again in 1925. The finished work, The Grieving Parents, two kneeling figures modelled on herself and her husband Karl, was placed in a Belgian war cemetery in 1932 and now stands at Vladslo, where Peter is buried. After the Nazis took power in 1933 she was forced to leave the academy, and her work was removed from museums. Her grandson, also named Peter, was killed in the Second World War in 1942. She died on 22 April 1945, 16 days before the war in Europe ended.

Türkçe oku
Alman baskı sanatçısı Käthe Kollwitz, ömrü boyunca yoksulluğu, emeği ve yası konu alan gravürler, ağaç baskılar ve taş baskılar yaptı; işlerinin merkezinde çoğu zaman işçi sınıfından kadınlar vardı. 1919'da Prusya Sanat Akademisi'ne seçilen ilk kadın oldu. Oğlu Peter 1914'te cephede öldü; bu acı, hayatının geri kalanındaki bütün işlerine yön verdi.

Peter, Birinci Dünya Savaşı'nın ilk aylarında, Ekim 1914'te Flandre'da öldüğünde 18 yaşındaydı. Kollwitz hemen bir anıt tasarlamaya başladı; ilk denemesini 1919'da yok etti ve 1925'te yeniden başladı. Kendisini ve eşi Karl'ı örnek alarak yaptığı, diz çökmüş iki figürden oluşan Yas Tutan Anne Baba, 1932'de Belçika'daki bir asker mezarlığına yerleştirildi; bugün Peter'ın da gömülü olduğu Vladslo'da duruyor. Naziler 1933'te iktidara gelince akademiden ayrılmak zorunda bırakıldı, eserleri müzelerden kaldırıldı. Yine Peter adını taşıyan torunu, 1942'de İkinci Dünya Savaşı'nda öldü. Kollwitz 22 Nisan 1945'te, Avrupa'da savaş bitmeden 16 gün önce öldü.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Käthe Kollwitz
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