Page 39 - Studio International - December 1967

done. What it needs is the art of reality . .
Moreover she has something to say about the label of
`social' artist which always followed her: 'Of course my
work has always been related to Socialism. This is because
of my father, my brother and all the literature of the
period. But the real reason for my choosing subjects
derived from the lives of the workers almost exclusively is
very simply because this sort of subject gives me in every
respect what I feel to be beautiful.' In any case her work
has nothing whatever to do with peasant tractor-drivers
and the commonplaces of Socialist Realism. On the
contrary, she was opposed to narrative art, to anecdotal
art, and criticized her early work for lapsing too far in
that direction. The broad mass of her work is in fact only
`social' inasmuch as it draws on subjects taken from the
world around her, her study, her children, her own face.
Certainly there are pictures of pregnant women, poor
and cast down, or workers' families gathered around
empty tables, eyes brimming with despair. But there are
as many self-portraits, from all periods of her life, and
pictures with a much more general significance, particu-
larly those in which she visually explores a fear of death.
Death is frequently personified as a gaunt figure in a
black cloak, or else as a skeleton clutching for a frightened
child hiding behind its mother. Most powerful of all is
the supreme image of a mother searching at night for her
son among heaps of dead on the battlefield. The main
figure, the bodies, almost all the etching is dark and in-
distinct, except the single torch-beam and the hand which
turns over the bodies. The emotion and deeper signifi-
cance of the etching is localized, the shock more acute.
Kollwitz saw revolution in art as well as in politics, but
her style remained unchanged. A visit to Paris in 1904
had no effect whatever, and the work of the Expression-
ists, the followers of the 'New Objectivity', finds no echo
in her style. It was in any case virtually mature and finally
formed from the start, for she was a born graphic artist
who drew as though walking in her sleep.
Facing page, left `The Social Democrats in Russia speak the only true She really found herself around 1895 when she began
Käthe Kollwitz language: Internationalism. But nevertheless they also work on a series of etchings called The Weavers. Gerhart
Self-portrait 1927 love their own country, God knows.' In spite of frequent Hauptmann's Realist drama, Die Weber, was first pro-
Staatliche Graphische
statements like this in her letters and diaries, in spite of duced at the Freie Bühne, Berlin, in 1893. This stark,
Sammlung Munich
her close involvement with politics, her expressly political direct drama impressed her as much as it frightened the
Facing page, right work, the posters and polemical etchings and lithographs, authorities who banned it in an atmosphere of outrage,
Die setangenen 1908 it would be wrong to see her in too strong a political self-righteous indignation and scandal. Its subject was the
Etching light. Pechstein, Grosz, Dix, Beckmann, all produced weavers' revolt during the thirty years' war, but it was
Seventh of the series
work of marked political emphasis. To be an artist clear that Hauptmann was using an historical subject to
working at that time almost demanded it, but no-one comment on a contemporary situation. Kollwitz' etchings
Above
Ruf des codes 1934/5 suggests that they were men with a specifically political are emotionally charged, dramatic and realistic, but it is
Lithograph platform. Kollwitz stood for ideas like no more war, no not the anecdotal realism of Leibl or Menzel. It is like
Eighth in the series more nationalism, and international understanding, and Menzel only in the breathtaking facility of technique
if she was sympathetic towards the Communist Party then and close attention to detail. It was propaganda raised
To mark the centenary of it was because she felt that it was the only party at the to the level of art by its virtuosity and conviction.
Käthe Kollwitz' birth time which approached those ideas with most determina- The drawings, etchings and lithographs then continue
exhibitions of her work are tion. What lies at the bottom of her art is the conviction with ever increasing power, right until the end of her
being staged in London that she, as a human being, had a responsibility to her life, with the same conviction, and without any trace of
by the Arts Council at the
Bethnal Green Museum fellow man. Art pour l'art was absolutely foreign to her, as morbidity or sentimentality. There is no better example
from November 8 to was the Dadaist escape into futility. As she wrote in her of this than the self-portraits, which chronicle with
December 10, and by diary on February 21, 1916: 'Read an article by E. V. objectivity the cruel passage of time on her face. The
Marlborough Fine Art at Keyserling : the coming art. He opposes Expressionism serenity and quiet hope in the early pictures of herself is
39 Old Bond Street from
November 14 to December 14 and says that post-war Germany has less need of an gradually extinguished by a hopelessness mixed with a
(with Ernst Barlach). over-rated private and "studio" art than it ever has stoical acceptance of what had come to pass. q