Paintings by Kollwitz
The cycle of paintings by Kollwitz is a representation of the pain and suffering of women while executing their day-to-day responsibilities. The images are used to explain the dangers and horrors of war and dissuade people from participating in them. The woman with the dead child, for example, is a depiction of her going through the loss of her child during World War I. Her art also included ploughmen and woman, which I interpreted as the effect of war where women are going to take up roles that were predominantly for men. They will pick up these roles at a hefty cost for men who would die during the war. The image resonates well with Kollwitz’s locale. She was in Germany, which was an active player in World War I, and the men in their area were enlisted to fight.
In her art, Kollwitz can be identified as an expressionist artist. Her art was filled with emotional etchings and not realism. This is even supported by the fact that during her pick as an artist, expressionism was starting to pick. The pick of expressionism is during the start of the 20th century, and its origin can be traced to Germany. Kollwitz was a German; hence we see a connection between her art and the movement that was going round during this period.
