Blog post 2- Kathe Kollwitz

Kathe Kollowitz lived through both world wars, and considering she lost her son in ww1 and her grandson in ww2 her view on war was extremely negative. Although Kathe was not physically a part of these wars, she was emotionally attached and affected by them. A majority of Kathe’s art portrays grief, sadness, and shows the devastation of war. A key point to Kathe’s art is that she incorporates all different sides of war. Throughout Kathe’s works she manages to show the viewer the effect of war on families, an actual figure of death taking a person, and mid-war devastation. In these three very similar works by Kathe she captures the impact of war and death on the parents of those fighting.

The first photo, called the Grieving Parents, pictures the mother and father of someone who died in war. The man on the left seems as if he is trying to be strong, but is barely holding himself together. While the mother is full of devastation, and seems incapable of even sitting upright. This piece as a whole is very impactful on the viewer, it shows the true feelings that people were feeling due to war.

The second photo, called The Parents, pictures a man and a women embracing each other. In this piece the parents barely look like human beings, they are faceless and dark. This piece is very powerful because it shows you the pure sadness that parents endured due to the war and losing a loved one. The Grieving Parents and the Parents are very similar in their subject matter and intent but, their intent was brought to the viewer in a different way.

The third photo, also called The Parents, is different than the first two in that we see the full faces of both the mother and the father. In this piece, Kollwitz shows us parents that seem emotionless. They both seem dead, but still alive. This, in my opinion, is the most moving parents piece by Kathe Kollwitz because in shows us the devastation caused by war, in a simple way.