Husband: “You really are drawn to dark art, aren’t you? Who is she?” Me: “What do you mean? We have a print of her’s hanging on your side of the bed.” Husband: “Print? What print? ”

Thus I offer you a slice of typical conversation overheard in our household, while dragging my beloved to a striking exhibition of works by Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945,) one of the icons of German modern art, currently shown at The Getty in L.A.

While he was muttering about the absence of visual memory, my brain was frantically searching for a translation of an untranslatable German term that is often – and mistakenly, oh so mistakenly – cited in connection with Kollwitz’ art: Betroffenheitskitsch. Betroffenheit can be translated as shock, dismay, consternation, sadness. But in this context it is probably meant to describe too much empathy verging into Kitschiness.

It was the kind of condemnation you heard from a younger generation of German artists, Martin Kippenberger among them, after over-exposure to the works of this celebrated artist who was claimed, for one, by the left (communists, socialists, feminists, you name it) for her anti-war stance and her artistic exploration of themes of social justice. Yury and Sonya Winterberg, authors of a Kollwitz biography (2015), speculate that Kollwitz’ emotional response to proletarian misery and the consequences of war was incompatible with the ironic if not sarcastic self-image that many more recent German artists have come to identify with.

The biography shines new light on her life and work. New to me, anyhow. Painstaking archival work and interviews with three of her surviving grandchildren reveal a complex story. On the one hand, she was preoccupied with death, growing up in a household that saw three of her siblings perish young. On the other hand, she possessed an extraordinary life force, was sensual, and openly acknowledged her bisexuality. The love for her children, it is hinted in the narrative, was overbearing bordering on abuse when it came to interacting with her sons in sexualized situations. Her self-assurenedness made her a center of her social circles, and many a famous artist, including Ernst Barlach and Berthold Brecht adored her. Her membership in diverse women’ organizations can be counted as early feminist engagement.

Germany has not one but three museums dedicated to her, the Käthe Kollwitz Museum in Cologne which has a marvelous collection of her works, the Käthe Kollwitz Museum in Berlin where she lived for much of her life, and the Käthe Kollwitz Haus in Moritzburg, where she rented two small rooms at the estate of friends after having been bombed out in Berlin in 1944 and where she died a year later.

Kollwitz was also hailed by the right as a safe bet of someone who had been unfazed by Nazi condemnation and offered sufficient pathos in her sculptures to serve as memorials for those killed in war and by Nazi persecution, needed when Berlin emerged as the German capital again. (None other than Chancellor Helmut Kohl ordered her work for the Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Victims of War and Dictatorship a few years after the wall came down.)

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So who was this woman? Someone who blazed a path into the Berlin academy at a time when males almost exclusively dominated, who won prizes, who was a sufficient threat to the Nazis to be banned from showing her work – and who simply observed everyday life, refining her skills in perpetuity to depict human suffering of the working class, the poor, and those sent to die for national ideals and imperialistic strivings. She lost a son in WW I, a grandson in WWII; she saw close friends murdered by paramilitary forces after the short-lived November revolution and the Spartacist uprising in January of 1919.

She observed, she depicted. She bore witness.

She also made it very clear that she resented being co-opted by any kind of political movement, across decades of diligent diary entries stating that she was not a political artist. She wanted to address political and social issues with her art, but from a humanist perspective, one that did not shy away from the sadness, the futility and misery that surrounded her.

Käthe Kollwitz: Prints, Process, Politics is allowing us a hard look at what she really accomplished. The exhibition features etchings, lithographs and woodcuts, from every phase of the artist’s career, alongside related preparatory drawings, proofs, and rejected versions of prints. It is a terrific learning experience, beautifully curated to showcase the evolution of some of her print cycles. Early etchings are delicate, later woodcuts become darker, more streamlined, expressionistic, although she never joined the expressionist movement per se. The viewer is expertly guided through multiple iterations of one image with explanatory pointers to what was changed and why by the artist.

This includes one of her most famous print cycles, Peasants’ War, produced across 6 years until completed in 1908. Its seven prints are eerily prescient of the tragedy about to unfold in 1914, repeating the human suffering that happened during the Bauernkrieg in 1524, a year-long revolt by poor farmers, ruthlessly crushed by the aristocracy, with over 100 000 farmers slaughtered. It was the largest and most devastating, futile uprising before the French Revolution.

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From the catalogue: According to exhibition co-curator Louis Marchesano, “Kollwitz is known for her powerful social commentary but what people often don’t fully appreciate is that the immediacy and expressive clarity of her images belie the efforts behind the works, which are products of a deliberate and measured artistic process.”

Exposure to process aside, one of the most moving contents for me was the depiction of mourners around the murdered friend and revolutionary Karl Liebknecht lying in state. As these things sometimes happen serendipitously, the very next day I came across a tattered copy of Alfred Döblin’s novel Karl and Rosa: November 1918, A German Revolution, a book I had read some 40 years ago. The novel by the same author as of Berlin Alexanderplatz describes the fragmentary revolution and the bloody terror that Kollwitz observed as well, so shortly after the horrors of the great war had ended. Here is a terrific review of the book that goes beyond Liebknecht’s and Luxemburg’s fate to sketch a crucial part of German history.

The novel was for sale as a fundraiser at the Southern California Library in LA. The library’s archive has an extensive collection of pamphlets and political ephemera from social justice causes. Among its substantial holdings are hallmarks of local activism, such as primary documents of the Black Panther Party and the Los Angeles Protection of the Foreign Born, which were saved by local residents during the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. I happened to come by when local organizers wrote postcards for prisoners for the holidays.

The community garden attached to the library is open and welcoming to the many homeless along Vermont Ave. The murals outside depict the history of women in the labor movement, among others.

Kollwitz would have felt right at home.

She was strong, demanding, ahead of her times and probably hard to live with. Her art work is extraordinary (over 100 self-portraits alone) and what is shown (and how it is shown) at The Getty provides much insight into her artistic prowess and her humanistic passions.

Käthe Kollwitz: Prints, Process, Politics – December 3, 2019–March 29, 2020, GETTY CENTER, Los Angeles, CA

https://www.getty.edu/research/exhibitions_events/exhibitions/kollwitz/

Music today is a song about the movement to honor Liebknecht and Luxemburg.

For my German readers there is a fascinating find – a former GDR children’s magazine had a record attached with an educational audio play on the imperialism, communist honor and Liebknecht’s revolt.