I took an excursion to the Albany area with my friend Marissa Pirog, to visit her home for the month of June. It was far too short to admire the beauty of the state, but it filled my soul all the same. Whilst there, I got to spend time with her family, and with my new friend Rachel Preville. One of the most inspiring events of the trip was visiting the MoMA in New York City.
There were so many paintings and prints to fill my eyes! From an art historical/nerdy Susanna perspective, I was most struck with my opportunity to see Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's Street, Dresden just centimeters away from the tip of my nose. I had studied the painting in 20th Century Art History just a few months before the trip, and got to experience the disorientation and anxiety that the painting evokes firsthand.
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| Street, Dresden |
The exhibition also included delicate and fragmented watercolors by Egon Schiele, which I giddily poured over.
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Nude with Violet Stockings and Black Hair
(Akt mit violetten Strümpfen und schwarzem Haar)
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However, the most precious discoveries that I made were in printmaking. The number of times that I was stunned by the beauty of the Expressionist prints while wandering the exhibit are too many to count with my fingers and toes. The exhibition included many printmaking techniques, including intaglio and etching, drypoint, lithography, linocut, and woodcut. Ernst Barlach, Max Beckmann, Lovis Corinth, Otto Dix, Rudi Feld, Conrad Felixmüller, Heinz Fuchs, George Grosz, Erich Heckel, Vasily Kandinsky, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Oskar Kokoschka, Ludwig Meidner, Emil Nolde, Max Oppenheimer, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Egon Schiele, and Käthe Kollwitz all made appearances in the collection.
Käthe Kollwitz made the biggest impression on me. I have never seen such beautiful woodcut prints in my life, and the images themselves compress emotion so thickly because of Kollwitz's technical talent and personal history. Here are examples of the seven prints of her portfolio that were on display, followed by the statement on the series, entitled Krieg (War), as appears on the MoMa website.
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Widow I (Die Witwe I)
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The Sacrifice (Das Opfer)
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The Volunteers (Die Freiwilligen)
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The Parents (Die Eltern)
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The Widow II (Die Witwe II)
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The Mothers (Die Mütter)
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The People (Das Volk)
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In 1919, Käthe Kollwitz began work on Krieg (War), her response to the tragedies endured during what she called those "unspeakably difficult years" of World War I and its aftermath. The portfolio's seven woodcuts focus on the sorrows of those left behind—mothers, widows, and children. Kollwitz had struggled to find the appropriate means of expression until she saw an exhibition of Ernst Barlach's woodcuts in 1920. Revising each print through as many as nine preparatory drawings and states, Kollwitz radically simplified the compositions. The large-format, stark black-and-white woodcuts feature women left to face their grief and fears alone, with their partners, or with each other.
Only one print, Die Freiwilligen (The volunteers), shows the combatants. In it, Kollwitz's younger son, Peter, takes his place next to Death, who leads the troops in an ecstatic procession to war. Peter was killed in action just two months later. Kollwitz wanted these works to be widely viewed. By eliminating references to a specific time or place, she created universally legible indictments of the real sacrifices demanded in exchange for abstract concepts of honor and glory. The prints were exhibited in 1924 at the newly founded International Anti-War Museum in Berlin.
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I also researched more about Kollwitz, who lived from 1867 to 1945, and found some publications which have brought her life closer to the heart. Here is an excerpt about her:
Kathe Kollwitz is considered by many to be one of the greatest draughtsmen and printmakers of all time. Often mentioned in discussions of German Expressionism, Kollwitz actually belonged to an earlier generation of artists…
Her father encouraged his daughter's talent for drawing and arranged for private instruction before sending her to art school for women in Berlin. This was quite progressive during the 1880s. She was influenced by Realists Max Klinger and Wilhelm Leibl and the works of Edvard Munch moved her to explore and confront emotionally charged subjects. Hunger and Death were daily visitors to her home because of her husband's medical practice in an impoverished section of Berlin. Kollwitz was a Socialist who wanted her art to have an effect on the way ordinary people viewed their world and hoped it would move people to action. Her son Peter died in WWI (her grandson Peter died in WWII) and as a result, Kollwitz suffered from extreme bouts of depression the rest of her life. Nonetheless, she stuck to her art during these times but became obsessed with the theme of Death…
When Hitler rose to power in 1933, she was forced to resign from the Berlin Akademie der Kunste but was never forbidden to work or officially classified as "Degenerate". In 1936, she was forbidden to exhibit and some of her works were removed from museums and galleries. In 1943, she evacuated Berlin for Mortizburg and died days before the end of the war hidden in a castle belonging to Prince Heinrich. She never saw the war end.
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In addition, I found a book entitled Käthe Kollwitz's Sacrifice by Regina Schulte (go read it for yourself!) that begins with the story of her sons, Hans and Peter, leaving for war, and is frequently supported with entries from her own diary. Her son Peter died on October 22, 1914. Here are some of the diary entries that I found shed light on her life and art:
During the early days I often forgot about the war or had the feeling: well, that's enough pressure, it's time to start living again. It was as if one had awakened from an unpleasant dream. But at that time I also felt a new beginning inside me. As if none of the old values held true anymore, and everything had to be reassessed. I experienced the possibility of free sacrifice.
Oh, when I think how Hans was in those days! Quite simply, he gave himself modestly, without a word. Cheerfully. Calmly and lovingly. He offered his young innocent breast.
...Uniformed. His child's face.
6 August 1914
It must have been on this day that Peter, during a walk through the city, saw the Franzer marching off to the crowd's rousing rendition of the 'Watch on the Rhine'. He is having his hair cut. Karl says, 'These splendid youths - we must work to be worthy of them'. It must also have been on the evening of that day that Peter asked Karl to let him go before the raising of the reserves. Karl tries his best to dissuade him. I feel grateful that he is fighting to keep him, but I know it cannot change anything anymore. Karl: 'The fatherland does not need you yet, otherwise you would have been called up already'. Peter, more quietly, but firmly: 'The fatherland does not need my year yet, but it needs me.' He keeps turning to me with silent pleading looks, begging me to intercede for him. Finally he says, 'Mother, when you embraced me, you said "Don't think me a coward, we are ready." I stand up, Peter follows me, we stand at the door and embrace and kiss and I ask Karl on Peter's behalf. - This singular hour. This sacrifice he forced out of me and which we forced out of Karl.
10 August 1914
...Hiking songs. To think that all of this - perhaps life itself - is over for our boys. For them, all of life is squeezed together into this space of time; they are anticipating everything in order to flame once and burn. And Peter has not yet known love, he was only just beginning to approach art.
27 August 1914
Farewell letter to Peter. It is as if the umbilical cord were being cut all over again. The first time into life, the second into death.
5 October 1914
Last night I dreamt of Peter again. I dreamt that he was standing before me and he was half Hans and half Peter. I reached around his body, which was quite slender like that of a child. I encompassed him with both arms and he bent his upper body slightly backwards. I wept and 202 History Workshop Journal asked him about his days in Flanders and how it was when he died. He was so gentle and smiled.
10 May 1916
I felt that I have no right to withdraw from the responsibility of being an advocate. It is my duty to voice the sufferings of people, the sufferings that never end and are as big as mountains.
1 April 1920
Every war already carries within it the war that will answer it. Every war is answered by a new war, until everything is smashed...
21 February 1944
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Until next time.
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Käthe Kollwitz
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"My work is not, of course, pure art... but it is art nonetheless... It is all right with me that my work serves a purpose. I want to have an effect on my time, in which human beings are so confused and in need of help."
-K.K.
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