Monday, May 03, 2010

Käthe Kollwitz: A Portrait of the Artist - Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Käthe Kollwitz Museum, Cologne

Self-Portrait Käthe Kollwitz... Self-Portrait (1924, Woodcut on thin laid Japan paper, Signed, lower right). From the exhibition Käthe Kollwitz: A Portrait of the Artist - Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Käthe Kollwitz Museum, Cologne at Galerie St. Etienne in New York, NY. "...Of all the artists exhibited at the Galerie St. Etienne over the course of its seventy-year history, Käthe Kollwitz has been most closely associated with the gallery’s co-director, Hildegard Bachert. Simultaneously celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Käthe Kollwitz Museum in Cologne and Hildegard Bachert’s seventieth year at the Galerie St. Etienne, the present exhibition focuses on the autobiographical core of Kollwitz’s achievement, as revealed in her self-portraits and related works. Although Kollwitz has long been revered as a champion of the oppressed, her commitment to social justice did not require an effacement of her personal identity. On the contrary, the artist’s probing of the human condition began and ended with her own experiences."