Käthe Kollwitz

Kathe Kollwitz was a German printmaker and sculptor whose stark, emotionally powerful graphic work depicting poverty, grief, and the suffering caused by war made her one of the most significant German artists of the early twentieth century. Working primarily in etching, lithography, and woodcut, she produced print cycles such as A Weavers' Revolt and War that portray working-class hardship and the toll of conflict with unflinching directness, drawing partly on her own experience losing a son in the First World War and a grandson in the Second. Kollwitz was the first woman elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts, a position the Nazi government later forced her to resign, and her socially committed, humanist graphic art remains widely reproduced as an image of pacifist and anti-war sentiment.