Closed off Together: Käthe Kollwitz’s Art of the Proletariat

 Käthe Kollwitz, The Mothers, sheet 6 of the "War" series. 1921-1922. woodcut

Germany in the early 20th century was a rapidly industrializing nation that was struggling with political, economic, and social change under the Weimar Republic. This environment led to extremist ideologies that culminated in the birth of the Third Reich in 1933. However, running parallel was an artistic “Golden Age” where art, literature, and philosophy flourished; this is the world of Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945).

Simple and yet powerful, Käthe Kollwitz’s art redefined the zeitgeist with her black and white prints of the proletariat class. As a female artist Kollwitz broke down walls of the predominantly male German Expressionist movement. Along with her contemporary socialist artists, Kollwitz was faced with the challenge of making work that both exposed the terrible underside of Berlin life and created a call for social change. This paper explores her use of closed compositions as not just a stylistic element of her work but as her call to action. Through comparing her early series, The Weavers Revolt and The Peasants War, with her later depiction of the proletariat class, especially of women and children, we can see her compositions become tighter and more unifying and that this artistic choice adds to the meaning of the work. This comparison gives a glimpse at what makes her work so successful in motivating social change. Closed off Together argues that Kollwitz’s consistent use of closed compositions throughout her large body of social justice work is the artistic embodiment of her understanding of social movements and their need for unified action.