Käthe Kollwitz - Exhibition and Print Making Techniques

Research: Print Making Techniques

Käthe Kollwitz (1867- 1945)

During the summer I went to see an exhibition at the Ferens Art Gallery, Hull -  Portrait of the Artist: Käthe Kollwitz – A British Museum and Ikon Gallery Partnership Exhibition.

Käthe Kollwitz was a German artist who worked with painting, printmaking (including etching, lithography and woodcuts) and sculpture. Her most famous art cycles, including The Weavers and The Peasant War, depict the effects of poverty, hunger, and war on the working class. She also made many honest, and soul-searching self-portraits. She had a great interest in the lives of women, their role and love of their children. Her early works were realistic, but her art is now more closely associated with Expressionism and exhibit great power. They are mainly in black and white, but she uses some coloured washes and makes use of coloured paper. Kollwitz lost her son Peter in the First World War and her grandson in the Second World War and she was a life-long socialist and pacifist. During the Second World War she was banned from exhibiting in Germany and fled Berlin. Eventually Kollwitz was the first woman elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts.

The Exhibition was divided into categories, some of which I show below and I include some of my own photographs by way of illustration. I have selected a number of examples to help me with my own techniques – and there are some new ideas too, such as the use of sandpaper. The exhibition was really interesting, because not only did it illustrate Expressionism as a movement, but also the particular role of women as source material and, of course, the artist was a woman as well.

A Weavers Revolt 1893-97

Plate 5, Etching and sandpaper

The series of prints, A Weavers’ Revolt was prompted by a play by Gerhart Hauptmann “Die Weber” (The Weavers), first shown in 1893.

The play concerned riots in 1844 among the impoverished handloom weavers in Silesia, but Kollwitz made contemporary parallels.

 

Plate 5 (detail) illustrating the techniques and use of sandpaper

Peasants’ War 1902-08

The subject was the peasant uprisings from 1524-26n the wake of the protestant Reformation, but Kollwitz’s interest lay with contemporary resonances.

Kollwitz gave particular emphasis to women in the narrative, not just as victims (such as the Plate “Raped”) but as active participants.

Charge, 1902-03

Plate 5 of Peasants’ War (detail)

Etching, drypoint, aquatint, lift ground and soft ground, with the imprint of two fabrics.

The female figure is “Black Anna”, a peasant woman from the Black Forest who was hailed in the nineteenth century as the first German revolutionary.

Woodcuts, War and Remembrance

Kollwitz’s personal tragedies and the wider human tragedy of war, profoundly affected her outlook.

The Widow 1 (Die Witwe) 1921-beginning of 1922

Plate 4 of War, portfolio of seven woodcuts (detail), MoMA

Kollwit focused on the experiences of mothers and widows of the young men whose lives had been sacrificed. The Widow 1 shows a pregnant, grief-stricken woman.

I think that the work of Käthe Kollwitz is very relevant to me from a number of points of view, but particularly mood and technique. As a result, I did some experimentation with her methods to see if I could learn how to create drama in an “expressionistic” way. Although my experiments involved printmaking, I can transfer the concepts into other media.

Dry Point and Carborundum

I made some quick sketches at the exhibition of works which particularly interested me. I took two of these sketches as inspiration and used aluminium plates into which I drew with an etching tool. I then very loosely and expressively painted on the plate using PVA glue and a brush. I then scattered carborundum over the plate and blew the residue off. The carborundum grit stuck to the painted marks I had made. I then inked up the plates and rolled them through the printing press (see images below). The technique created textured movements within the inked surface, which can be seen more easily in the second image, and even more so in reality.

Above: Experiment 1, inspired by a Käthe Kollwitz Self-Portrait of 1924 (hers is a woodcut, but mine (above) is dry point, PVA glue (loosely painted) and carborundum)

Above: Experiment 2, dry point and carborundum, inspired by a Käthe Kollwitz print “Charge” – see above p. 128 for detail of the original.

Relevance to my own practice

I really feel that I have been inspired by Käthe Kollwitz – both in subject matter and techniques. Her deep soul-searching for self-awareness, as shown in her self-portraits, is profound. Her studies of women, and the woman/child relationship, are very moving, as are her historical works which have social themes which are timeless. Although I concentrated on a particular type of experimentation concerning print making, I think that the feelings the images evoke can be transcribed to other mediums which can be adapted to obtain similar moods and effects – perhaps tonal works in oil or acrylic, with use of impasto. The use of carborundum and sandpaper are techniques which I can develop further.

Carey F. and Egremont M. (2017) Portrait of the Artist Käthe  Kollwitz Birmingham, England: Ikon Gallery in collaboration with the British Museum.