Born in 1867, Käthe Kollwitz is considered to be one of the greatest German Expressionist artists. Raised by leftist parents during a time of great social and political unrest in Europe, Kollwitz chose to address the struggles of the working class--and the many faces of human suffering--while many of her contemporaries were investigating form and abstraction instead.

Kollwitz was a master printmaker, producing etchings, woodcuts and lithographs as well as drawings in traditional media such as charcoal and graphite. The bold, definitive lines that reappear in her work reveal sympathy for the common man and a remarkable faith in the strength of the human spirit.

During her long career, Kollwitz produced four distinct "cycles" of art that are considered to comprise her masterworks: "The Weavers" (1898), "The Peasant War" (1908), "War" (1923) and "Death" (1935). The "War" cycle was her reaction to the death of her son Peter in World War I. His passing in 1914 was one of the most devastating events in Kollwitz's life. She quickly became a pacifist and actively rallied against war.

The devastation of war would haunt her again later in life when her grandson, also named Peter, was killed in World War II, and her home was inadvertently bombed during an Allied raid, destroying much of her artwork.

The men and women in Käthe Kollwitz's work are bent and burdened by the ravages of history--peasants chewed up by industrialization, mothers lamenting children lost to starvation or storm troopers, towns tattered by world war--but they are not altogether broken. Even in the images where all hope seems lost, the beauty, albeit grim, of Kollwitz's work rises up to offer some possibility of redemption.

Despite the loss and struggle in her own life, Kollwitz was able to produce art that is, even today, powerful and uplifting.--anonymous