Käthe Kollwitz and The German Expressionists

As a reaction to the strict observational nature of Impressionism, the Expressionist movement bust onto the scene, bringing with it the intense emotionally it pictured.  Expressionism pulls from the depths of Van Gogh, Edvard Munch and the remaining Post-Impressionist artists as well as the Fauvism movement in France that emphasized ‘color for color’s sake’.  The revolutionary Expressionism movement offered the public an antithesis to Impressionism’s passive depiction of light and nature. 

As the title of the movement alludes to, the goal of an Expressionist is to make the viewer feel what they were feeling. Expressionist works are not rated on how aesthetically pleasing they are, but on how well they express the emotions behind the work. According to Joseph Minton, "The expressionist artist displays an internalized depiction of reality and allows their personal and potentially biased emotions to impact that depiction.  It is an art form that comes from the artist’s point of view. It is the one art form that truly allows the viewer to both see and feel the world through the eyes of the artist." Once an observer understands this, they are more likely to appreciate the radical difference between Impressionism and Expressionism.

Anchoring the development of the unique German Expressionism movement were three schools: Die Brucke (1905-13), Der Blaue Reiter (1909-14), and the post-war Die Neue Sachlichkeit (1920s). The Die Brucke (The Bridge) School was the first Expressionist school and stuck closely to the styles of Fauvism and Post-Impressionism, however, they added an interesting twist with the influence of African and Oceanic tribal motifs.  Their works focus primarily on their lives, which lead to a large number of urban scenes, dramatic landscapes, and outdoor female nudes. 

The Der Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) School was loose association of painters who did not have a set artistic program.  A common theme throughout the school was the importance of color as a symbol.  Many of the works border on the incomprehensible compositionally, however, each work carries with it an intense emotion through the color.  By this period, all observation of perspective and illusionism is out (accelerated by the popularity of the crude woodcut) and the abstract style has taken over.  This new abstract style allowed the artists to portray their spiritual values in opposition of what they viewed as corrupt materialism.  The Blue Rider School fizzled out when the war started in part because many of its members were killed and also because the public needed a darker style to reflect the sentiments toward The War. 

Feeding off of the public sentiments, the Die Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) School was formed.  This school rejected the visionary idiom of Die Brucke and the symbolism of Der Blaue Reiter in favor of concrete portrayals of a society filled with all sorts of criminals.  A large proportion of the pieces during this time were detailed portraits of people, but with caricatured faces. The primary reason this school is not part of Realism is because the excessive satire and disillusionment made the subjects unrealistic. During the 1920s there was broad sweeping dissatisfaction with the Wiemar Republic, which can be seen in the pessimistic works of these artists.

Possibly one of the most political movements in art, Expressionist artists found the need for a medium that would allow them to disseminate their works quickly and cost-effectively.  Something that had long been used but had never found a cause so needy was the method of artistic printmaking.  German Expressionist artists flocked to these revived methods and pumped out a flurry of works.  This medium was especially suiting because the black-and-white scheme helped the artists to explore the dark side of life they depicted. There are three different techniques that artist of this time used: woodcut, intaglio, and lithography.  The woodcut was used for works that required bold, flat patterns with not as much detail.  Intaglio allowed artists to create more detailed works with a wider range of shades.  Intaglio includes drypoint, which is the incision of a metal plate, and etching, which is the chemical removal of metal from the plate. These methods lead to fuzzy lines and fine sculptural lines, respectively.  Lithography became the most popular among painters because it was the only one that didn’t involve removing material, therefore not requiring the artist to think in reverse.  An image is created by drawing on a stone with a grease pen and utilizing the insolubility of oil and water for printing.  Because of the revival of these new techniques, German Expressionist artists produced a very large amount of works and had a great public influence.

One of those artists is the well-known Käthe Kollwitz.  As many of the other Expressionists, her work began in naturalism, but took a turn to the new abstract form of expression.  Married to a physician that cared for the proletariat class, Kollwitz regularly came in contact with the poor and suffering. This inspired her two famous series, The Weavers and Peasant War, which depict dramatic themes of the workers’ misery, hope, courage, and doom.  The Weavers series, released in 1898, is done in a very realistic style that predated the high period of the Expressionist movement.  Even though this series is done in a realistic style, the nature of the work and the subjects allows her to emote.  Nobel laureate Gerhart Hauptmann, who based some of his stories on her works, said, “Her silent lines penetrate the marrow like a cry of pain; such a cry was never heard among the Greeks and Romans.”

Although she was never part of a school, most likely because of her gender and subject choice, she had a profound impact on the movement.  In her second series, Peasant War, Kollwitz takes a step up technically with her etchings.  She achieves a dramatic command of light and shadow while widening her subject material.  This series focuses on peasant life during a revolution in the early 16^th century. Within that focus, Kollwitz seems to have an affection for women subjects and mothers in specific. Many of her pieces show a mother searching for her children or, in her most famous work Woman with Dead Child, a mother mourning over the loss of her beloved child. It is fair to say that Kollwitz is one of the most prolific artists of proletariat life and suffering.
A third series of Kollwitz’s was released in 1924 titled War.  This series is filled with images of despair inspired by the son she lost to the fighting in 1914.  Kollwitz also switched to the woodcut methods, which led to a compositional simplification but continued to carry the same message.  This transition was in part because of her desire to quickly reproduce these images and disseminate her ideas to the nation.  Being a committed socialist and pacifist, her works are filled with negative opinions towards war and praise for the new ideas of communism.  As a whole, Kollwitz and her fascination with the proletariat class fits as another irregularly shaped puzzle piece in the artistically diverse period called Expressionism.