1000 Museums

Kollwitz is considered one of the most important early 20th-century German artists. She worked to capture the working class hardships, such as war, starvation, poverty, and death, by drawing, painting, sculpting, and printmaking. The artist mainly focused on the perspective of grieving mothers. She began formal art-making at twelve years old but started working with the working-class subject matter at sixteen. In her childhood, she suffered the death of her siblings. Later she would marry a doctor where she was in proximity to more hardships of the working class. They had two sons, one of whom died in WWI. She studied in Berlin and Munich at women\’s art schools, where she found passion as a draughtsperson. She became the first woman to be elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts and the first to receive honorary professor status. Despite being a woman in a time where women were considered inferior, she prevailed and had many accomplishments during her lifetime.