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Notice how one side of the face sinks into grainy gray while light catches the cheek, the nose and the closed mouth.
Kollwitz made this lithograph of herself in 1915. In October 1914 her son Peter had been killed in the First World War, near Diksmuide in Flanders. Here her face comes out of soft, grainy tone, with almost no outline at all.
lithograph · Overall: 27.2 x 23.4 cm · Cleveland Museum of Art · Expressionism
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Self-Portrait
- Artist
- Käthe Kollwitz (German, 1867–1945)
- Date
- 1915
- Medium
- lithograph
- Dimensions
- Overall: 27.2 x 23.4 cm (10 11/16 x 9 3/16 in.)
- Credit line
- Mr. and Mrs. Lewis B. Williams Collection
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Cleveland Museum of Art
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.