- Title
- Self-Portrait
- Date Made
- 1924
- Medium
- Lithograph on Japan paper
- Dimensions
- Image: 11 3/4 x 8 15/16 in. (29.85 x 22.7 cm) irregular; Sheet: 17 5/16 x 12 7/8 in. (43.97 x 32.7 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.82.288.184
- Collecting Area
- Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies
- Curatorial Notes
Käthe Kollwitz focused on subjects considered typical for female artists, such as women and children, but the emotional intensity of her work set it apart. The first woman elected to the Prussian Academy of Fine Arts and the first to achieve the title of Professor, Kollwitz was the rare woman who achieved prominence and success as an artist on par with her male peers.Her prints, which were reproduced in publications and printed in multiple editions, spread as far as China and Mexico and made her popular in the United States. Her likeness is also immediately recognizable; she created more than one hundred drawn and printed self-portraits and made one self-portrait in bronze, on view nearby. These depictions were always unidealized, showing the effects of age and the experiences of a difficult but eventful life in a matter-of-fact way. She would eventually be expelled from the Prussian Academy due to her sympathies with the working class, and was forbidden from teaching as a result of Nazi cultural policies.
Exhibition Label: Women’s Work: Art by Women in Germany, 1900–1933, 2021, Erin Maynes.
- Selected Bibliography
Davis, Bruce. German Expressionist Prints and Drawings: The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies. Los Angeles, CA: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1989; Munich, Germany: Prestel, 1989.
- Chipp, Herschel B. and Karin Breuer. The Human Image in German Expressionist Graphic Art From the Robert Gore Rifkind Foundation. Berkeley: University Art Museum, Berkeley, 1981.
- Klipstein, August. Käthe Kollwitz : Verzeichnis des graphischen Werkes. Bern : Klipstein, 1955.
