By Evan McMurtry Along unassuming corridors and tucked away from the big-name paintings at the AGO, this past summer the gallery mounted an exhibition of prints, drawings, and sculptures titled Käthe Kollwitz: Art and Life. It demonstrated the power of art to be humane and political, while retaining its beauty and dignity. One of three exhibitions on Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945) that celebrate a major donation of the artist's works by Dr. Brian McCrindle, the second exhibition Käthe Kollwitz: Voice of the People is now on view until March 3, 2019. After viewing the first exhibition, I highly anticipate the next two installments. The exhibition situated Kollwitz art in its context, as a German artist whose life straddled the two world wars, though without going into encyclopedic detail. As the panels pointed out, Kollwitz began her career in the realist tradition: her husband, a doctor, treated the poor while practicing in Berlin, giving her proximity to working class women whom she depicted with sympathy and compassion. Viewers can appreciate her mastery of print media, especially lithography and drypoint. Kollwitz's son, Peter, died fighting in World War I, after which she was saddled with depression -impacting both her art and her career - which was addressed in the exhibition. At that point her art began to grapple with broader themes, making much use of allegory to personify death in particular. In one print, death is portrayed fighting with a mother over her dead child, however, in another death is also acknowledged as a friend. This -although remote from modern sensibilities- was not far from her reality. Another panel related her imagery to German dance of death woodcuts of the Renaissance. Allegory as a visual device is particularly suited to spotlighting humanity and its failings. With the rise of National Socialism, as early as 1932 Kollwitz had signed the dringender appell, in which the country's leading thinkers (including Albert Einstein) called for the defeat of the National Socialist party in the 1932 German federal election. She was blacklisted by the Nazi regime for being a pacifist and for embracing German Expressionism -what they termed 'degenerate' art- though still allowed to practice her art. The entire Nazi administration was bent on a crazed crusade of 'purification' against Expressionist art of the Weimar Republic (which they termed 'unfinished' and 'leftist') and against Jewish artists, which was a precursor to the horrors of the Holocaust. Much of the art was purged from German galleries - it went as far as burning large quantities of paintings and other works in Berlin on March 20, 1939, under orders from Joseph Goebbels. Jewish dealers were forced to sell off their collections, often to pay exit fees, a fact that has been demonstrated by the continuing restitution of Nazi plunder to its rightful heirs. Meanwhile, Hitler had his own favoured artists and his cronies had been hoarding looted Renaissance works for his planned galleries in Linz. (This is documented in The Rape of Europa : The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War by Lynn H. Nicolas). Unfortunately, Kollwitz did not live to see the war end: her house in Berlin was bombed with the loss of much of her art and then she became a guest of Print Ernst Heinrich of Saxony at Moritzburg, near Dresden. He was an opponent of the Nazis and was an admirer of Kollwitz.
Several monographs have been recently published on Kollwitz and we can look forward to more inclusion of female artists at major institutions like the AGO and on the art market. Kollwitzs' art could be called anti-propaganda; it is about humanity being trampled by tyranny. I noticed a surprising number of people visiting the show and spending a lengthy amount of time viewing the art works. Perhaps this is a reflection of our current times.
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