Mother with Sleeping Child

The work of the German artist Käthe Kollwitz centres on the individual. The mother-and-child theme appears frequently in her oeuvre. Though her drawings, prints and sculptures are intimate, they are often a critique and indictment of social injustice. She examines the dark side of life: poverty, exploitation and war. Kollwitz drew inspiration from her own experience and environment. As the wife of a physician, she was profoundly aware of the circumstances that clouded the lives of many people. She also lived through the two world wars. She lost her youngest son in the Great War and her grandson in the Second World War. In 1933, with the rise of National Socialism, Kollwitz’s art was branded degenerate (entartet) and banned from public exhibition. In 1943 she was forced to flee from war-torn Berlin. Her home was destroyed in an air raid later that year and much of her work was lost. Kollwitz died in April 1945 shortly before the end of the war.. This large sheet is the only drawing by Kollwitz at the museum. The collection does however include a representative selection of her etchings, lithographs and woodcuts. [tekst: Jonieke van Es]