CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/9/2024

The excruciating power of Käthe Kollwitz

“Woman with Dead Child,” state IV/X (1903), is from Käthe Kollwitz: A Retrospective, published to accompany the exhibition on view now at MoMA. Surely years in the making, this gut-punching gathering of rare drawings, prints and sculptures centered on motherhood, grief and resistance could not be more perfectly timed for those of us who are struggling to comprehend or even live with the turmoil and anguish of today’s military, social and political conflicts around the world and at home. (Read Aruna D’Souza’s recent review in The New York Times for more on this.) In the exhibition catalog, curator Starr Figura writes, “The five decades during which [Kollwitz] was professionally active were some of the most volatile in German history. From the 1890s through the early 1940s, as the country lurched from the upheavals of industrialization through the traumas of two world wars, she dedicated her art to advocating for those whose burdens were the most acute and underrecognized. ‘I felt that I have no right to withdraw from the responsibility of being an advocate,’ she wrote. ‘It is my duty to voice the sufferings of people, which are never-ending and as large as a mountain.’”