Self-Portrait

Kathe Kollwitz was a prolific printmaker and sculptor whose long career spanned the politically and artistically turbulent decades of the first half of the twentieth century in Germany. Subjects such as war, death, and misery and the corresponding themes of struggle, suffering, and loss make for an oeuvre that is both somber and moving. She also executed a number of Self-Portraits, especially in later years; they show a face that had personally weathered many of the hardships she spent her artistic life depicting. Her stylistic transition from naturalism to a unique form of expressionism heightened the dramatic content of her works.