Die Mütter (The Mothers), from the series War

“It is my duty to voice the sufferings of humankind, the never-ending sufferings heaped mountain-high. This is my task, but it is not an easy one to fulfill.”—Kathe Kollwitz, 1920Käthe Kollwitz, the first woman professor of at the Prussian Academy of the Arts, is one of the most important graphic artists of the twentieth century. Witness to both World Wars, the deaths of her brothers, son, and grandson, Kollwitz’s extremely bold and distilled print Die Mütter (The Mothers) was the final image in her War series (1922–23). The women’s weighty forms, chiseled and enlarged hands, and watchful eyes protect in all directions. In the center, a mother covers the eyes of a swathed infant. The artist turned to woodcut for bolder, compressed, and more direct images in 1914 after her son Peter was killed. Kollwitz’s works continue to confront universal suffering, the relationship between the mother and child, and how to represent historical cataclysm. (“This is no Less Curious: Journeys through the Collection” cocurated by Sonja Gandert, Alexandra Palmer, and Alana Ryder and presented at the Johnson Museum January 24 – April 12, 2015)