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Käthe Kollwitz. German, 1867–1945. Die Mütter (The Mothers), Plate VI from the series Krieg (War), 1922-23.

Woodcut printed in black on Japan paper. Purchased by SCMA. Kollwitz © 2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Northampton, MA—Smith College Museum of Art (SCMA) will present MOTHERS’ ARMS Käthe

Kollwitz’s Women and War , an exhibition on the 20th-century German artist and social activist Käthe

Kollwitz, from January 29–May 29, 2016.

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MOTHERS’ ARMS Käthe Kollwitz’s Women and War—New exhibit ion at SCMA, cont’d.

Henriette Kets de Vries, manager of the Cunningham Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings and

Photographs at SCMA, organized the show. According to Kets de Vries, “SCMA is unusually fortunate to

have more than 50 Kollwitz works in its collection of works on paper. Over the past several years—while

teaching Smith and Five College students in the museum’s Cunningham Center—I’ve noticed a growing

fascination with Kollwitz’s work. That fact, combined with my personal background (note: the show’s

curator is Dutch, and has a German grandmother and Jewish grandfather), compelled me to want to

delve deeply into Kollwitz’s work and personal story.”

MOTHERS’ ARMS is the companion to the fall 2015 exhibition, The Krieg Cycle: Käthe Kollwitz

and World War I , organized by, and shown at the Davis Museum, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA.

Claire Whitner, associate curator at the Davis Museum, organized The Krieg Cycle and edited Kollwitz

and the Women of War: Femininity, Identity, and Art in Germany during World War I and II, the joint

catalogue for the Davis and Smith shows. Henriette Kets de Vries also contributed to the exhibition

catalogue. The catalogue will be released at a free Second Friday program at SCMA on February 12,

2016. Details here.

MOTHERS’ ARMS EXHIBITION OVERVIEW

Drawn from SCMA’s permanent collection, with loans of historic posters, prints, and sculptures from

private and public collections, the exhibition includes 50-plus objects that place Kollwitz’s work in

political, historical, and cultural context. Public lenders include the Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore,

MD; the William Benton Museum of Art, at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT; and the Library of

Congress, Washington, D.C.

Women and mothers were a major focus for Kollwitz and were featured as heroic rebel rousers and

activists, as breadwinners and protective guardians of children, and—in her later work—as victims or

mourners of the dead. With magazines and other ephemera that addressed women’s issues,

MOTHERS’ ARMS presents Kollwitz’s work in a broad historic context, displaying a variety of materials

from Weimar politics to the Nazi propaganda machine.

Many of the artist’s diary entries are excerpted in the exhibition, as well. These fragments offer insights

into Kollwitz’s internal struggles, not only as a German female artist and activist during the two World

Wars, but also as the mother of two sons, one of whom was killed on the battlefield. The personal

circumstances of Kollwitz’s life and work offer an incisive, poignant perspective on the contradictions and

perplexities of wartime experience.

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MOTHERS’ ARMS Käthe Kollwitz’s Women and War—New exhibit ion at SCMA, cont’d.

KÄTHE KOLLWITZ (1867–1945)

IMAGE: Lotte Jacobi. American, born Germany, 1896–1990. Printed by Carlos Richardson. Portfolio I; Kathe Kollwitz. 1931 negative; 1978 print. Gelatin silver print. Purchased by SCMA.

Kollwitz (née Käthe Schmidt) was born in 1867 in Königsberg, East Prussia (present day Kaliningrad,

Russia) into a liberal, upper-middle-class family. Encouraged by her father, she studied painting in Berlin

(1884–85) and in Munich (1888– 89). In her early career, Kollwitz was influenced by the German

Symbolist artist and writer Max Klinger, and later by the sculptor and printmaker Ernst Barlach. She

focused mainly on the graphic arts, creating etchings, lithographs, woodcuts, and later also sculpture.

Following her marriage to Karl Kollwitz, a medical doctor, she moved with him in 1891 to Prenzlauer

Berg, one of Berlin’s working class districts. Already drawn to the plight of the working classes, Kollwitz

was motivated by her daily interactions with the people from this depressed neighborhood to give them

a voice through her art.

After the popular successes of her print series, A Weavers’ Uprising (1894–98) and Peasant War (1902–

08), she embraced WWI with some measure of hope for change. But by the war’s end she was left

disillusioned and grief-stricken at the death of her youngest son Peter, on the battlefield in Belgium.

Becoming an avowed pacifist, Kollwitz dedicated her art (which included topical posters and pamphlets)

to humanitarian socialist issues.

In 1919 she became the first woman to be elected and appointed professor to the Prussian Arts

Academy. She subsequently co-founded and became director of the Women’s Art Association, an

organization dedicated to exhibiting women’s art, but with the rise of the Nazi party she was forced to

resign her post at the Academy. After moving to Moritzburg (near Dresden) to escape the bombing in

Berlin, Kollwitz died in 1945, only a few weeks before the end of the war.

KOLLWITZ’S ACTIVISM

Along with her fellow socialist artists, Kollwitz produced posters and pamphlets addressing hunger,

exploitation, and other social ills. Kollwitz’s work gave voice to her favorite humanitarian causes, and she

undertook a number of projects that addressed challenging women’s issues, including abortion rights,

alcoholism and domestic abuse, labor rights for women, and even the sharing of breast milk. These

were illustrated with confrontational imagery that dared to portray the stark realities of the day. During

the 1920s, Kollwitz contributed many works for public causes. In January 1920, she was asked to make a

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MOTHERS’ ARMS Käthe Kollwitz’s Women and War—New exhibit ion at SCMA, cont’d.

poster for a large relief effort for Vienna. However, her feelings regarding the project were over-

shadowed by the loss of her son Peter and the desire to work on his memorial sculpture.

Kollwitz strove to find the humanity within the brutal events that unfolded from one war to the next. She

turned to her art not only as an outlet to express and reflect upon her personal anger and loss, but also

to answer the call to make a difference in broader political terms and to seek some way to resist the

cycle of destruction.

Often seen as universal images of women, war, and suffering, the works of Käthe Kollwitz offer powerful

testimony not only concerning the ravages of the two World Wars on her own life, but about the socio-

political realities of Germany’s role in this period of history.

MOTHERS’ ARMS Käthe Kollwitz’s Women and War is funded in part by the Louise Walker Blaney, class of

1939, Fund for Exhibitions; the Maxine Weil Kunstadter, class of 1924, Fund; the Publications and Research Fund of

SCMA; the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a State Agency; and by the Carlyn Steiner ’67 and George Steiner

Endowed Fund, in honor of Joan Smith Koch.

EXHIBITION-RELATED PUBLIC PROGRAMS

SCMA’s education and membership staff have planned a diverse schedule of exhibition-related

programs in connection with the exhibition. These include monthly gallery talks (February–April); free

Second Fridays and film screenings in February and March; plus public lectures and a two-part Teachers’

Workshop. The gallery talks will be presented by artists Barry Moser (February 5) and Katy Schneider

(March 4), and by Henriette Kets de Vries (April 1). Most programming will be free with museum

admission. (For program details and fees where applicable, see Kollwitz related programs.)

ABOUT SCMA Studying and appreciating the visual arts and promoting visual literacy are at the core of SCMA's mission, supported by the Museum's state-of-the-art galleries, classrooms, and the Cunningham Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings and Photographs. SCMA’s permanent collection includes 25,000 works of art; approximately 20,000 are works on paper. Fall 2015 marked the completion of the Museum’s two-phase, five-year comprehensive Gallery Redesign Project during which all of the Museum’s galleries were updated, renovated, and reinstalled. Visitors will see (moving from the top floor down): Art after 1800—African, American, and European paintings and sculpture; Art before 1800—American, Ancient World, and European paintings and sculpture; the changing exhibition gallery; and, on the lower level, Art after 1950 and Asian art—including the three new spaces: the Carol T. Christ Gallery for Asian Art; a digital media gallery; and a new “Talk Back” interactive learning space. The Museum Shop, acclaimed artist-designed restrooms, and handcrafted artist-designed gallery benches are also of special interest to the museum’s visitors.

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Smith College Museum of Art is located at 20 Elm Street at Bedford Terrace, Northampton, MA 01063. Hours: T-Sat 10–4; Sun noon–4; and Second Fridays 10–8 (4–8 Free)

Follow SCMA More information about MOTHERS’ ARMS Käthe Kollwitz’s Women and War here

Illustrated MOTHERS’ ARMS exhibition checklist is available upon request