Feminine 20th Century German Expressionist Artist - Kathe Kollwitz

Born in 1867 to a father who was a radical social democrat who became a mason and home builder and qualified by her grandmother on matters of religion and socialism Kathe Kollwitz dedicated her life to political activism. From an earlier age she was confronted by death when her younger brother died, leaving her deeply affected.Her father's encouragement start at the age of 12 noticed her progress wonderfully until she was old enough to move the Women's School of Art in Berlin, at a time when girls weren't allowed to study like men. In the age of 17 she got engaged to a student Karl Kollwitz whom she'd not marry until 1891 when he was a qualified physician. In the years in-between she studied at Munich woman's art school, discovering there that she was a more talented draftsman than painters, then she returned to her house and rented a where she continued to attract Germany's working-class laborers.Two of her finest works were The Weavers: an cycle inspired by the oppression of Silesian Weavers in Langembielau and their fundamentally unsuccessful purchase violent revolt in 1842, and The Peasant War: and etching cycle equally inspired by a violent revolution this time around in southern Germany during the early years of the reformation when, in 1525, the peasants took arms against the feudal lords of the church who treated them as slaves.During WWI she lost her one of her sons to the fighting and lost a son to WWII. All throughout her life she was a pacifist and produced anti-war art. She offered designs for the left-wing publications of pre-Nazi Germany and during the power battle which followed the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II sought to ally the workers with the communist Soviets.When the strongly anti-communist Nazis came to power they barred her from demonstrating and stripped her of her teaching post at-the Berlin Academy of Art. Despite all of this she kept in Germany. She left Berlin in 1943, and through the latter days of-the war her property was destroyed by an allied bomb, taking with it the majority of her work, all except a tiny collection she got with her.In 1932 she eventually finished her monument to the child she'd lost in 1914: sculptures named The Grieving Parents. She was the very first woman to be elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts. She died in 1945 in Moritzburg.Works: The WeaversPeasant WarDeath and WomanDeath Woman and Child