Käthe Kollwitz: Woman With Dead Child

Käthe Kollwitz, who lived from 1867 to 1945, was raised in Prussia and spent her adult years living in Germany as an artist and wife of a physician. During her lifetime she experienced vast social upheaval as a result of socialism, fascism and Nazism. The images she witnessed during working class revolts, civil unrest, World War I and World War II greatly impacted the art she created over her lifetime. Another factor which impacts all artist is the popular art movements of the times. Over Käthe Kollwitz’s seventy-eight years of life she lived through the popular art movements of realism, impressionism, post-impression and expressionism. Kollwitz’s famous etching of Woman with Dead Child prominently represent the styles of realism and expressionism. Käthe Kollwitz received formal artist education during the height of realism. The art movement of realism, which was most popular between 1848 to the 1900’s, began around the 1840’s due to the social changes brought on by the industrial revolution. Art of the realism movement focused on real …show more content…
Impressionism was popular between 1865 and 1885 reaching its height of popularity after the Franco-Prussian war and the unification of Germany. The key features of impressionism art is the illusion of light meant to fool the eye. These paintings focused more on colors to create a visual effect rather than defined lines to recreate a real image. Many art critics did not like impressionism because paintings tended to look unfinished or poor in quality. Monet and Renoir were popular impressionist painters. The subjects of most impressionist painting typically revolved around the social life in Paris. Kollwitz had received some sculpture training in Paris after the height of the impressionism period, however, her work never focused on the Paris society nor did her style reflect impressionism (The Art Story,