She was the most famous German woman artist of the twentieth century and nevertheless an exceptional phenomenon: Käthe Kollwitz. The Städel Museum is celebrating her diversity, explosive power, and modernity with a major exhibition.
Your Visit
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Tue, Wed, Fri, Sat, Sun 10 am – 6 pm
Thur 10 am – 9 pm
Mon closed
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Tue, Wed, Fri, Sat, Sun 10 am – 6 pm
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- Entry from €16 / €14, €9 Tue from 3 pm
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- Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main
Programme
for this exhibition
About the Exhibition
As an artist, Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945) followed paths of her own: She devoted herself not to painting, but above all printmaking and drawing—a decision as bold as it was determined— and there found her way to an independent pictorial language distinguished by incisive immediacy. In the hope of influencing society with her art, she explored existential human questions from a new perspective, also addressing troublesome topics. Not least of all for that reason, the artist and her work were politically instrumentalized in Germany after 1945—a reception still impacting our collective conception of her to this day.
Awaiting our visitors this spring is an encounter with an artist whose oeuvre has lost nothing of its topicality to this day.
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Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945)
Two Studies of a Labourer Woman, 1910 -
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Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945)
Parisian Cellar Tavern, 1904 -
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Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945)
Female nude seen from the back with green shawl, 1903 -
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Exhibition Film
This complex history of Käthe Kollwitz’s public reception as well as the Städel Museum’s own extensive holdings, enhanced by works from leading museums and private collections, form the point of departure for the exhibition. More than 110 striking works on paper, sculptures, and early paintings by the artist will be on view, including outstanding loans from the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett, the Käthe Kollwitz Museum in Cologne, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Sprengel Museum Hannover, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart and elsewhere. These works will bear trenchant witness to Kollwitz’s decision in favour of graphic art as well as her nonconformity and love for experimentation. They will reveal the special nature of her themes, her formal vocabulary and her compositional dramaturgy. The show will moreover explore the charged relationship between aesthetics and politics in her oeuvre. Finally, an overview of how the artist was assessed on both sides of the inner-German border after 1945 will serve as a reflection on the power of cultural-political narratives.
Curator
Dr. Regina Freyberger (Head of Prints and Drawings after 1800, Städel Museum)
Exhibition Views
Gallery
Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945)
Self-portrait with head in hand, 1889/91
Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945)
Self-Portrait with Outstretched Hand, ca. 1900
Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945)
Female nude seen from the back with green shawl, 1903
Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945)
Parisian Cellar Tavern, 1904
Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945)
The Parents, Sheet 3 of the cycle War, 1921/22
Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945)
Sheet of studies with sketches after Rubens and self-portrait, ca. 1890/91
Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945)
Outbreak, Plate 5 from “The Peasants’ War” , 1902/03
Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945)
Half-length portrait of a working-class woman with blue shawl, 1903
Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945)
Two Studies of a Labourer Woman, 1910
Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945)
Tower of Mothers, Model: 1937/38, Cast: 1969 (?)
Discover the works of the exhibition in the Digital Collection.
Tuesday Special
Take advantage of our Tuesday Special and visit the permanent exhibition and all special exhibitions for the single price of €9.
Every Tuesday from 3 to 6 pm.
Digital Offers
for this Exhibition
Film
Sponsors & Patrons
Sponsored by
With additional support from
Media partners
Süddeutsche Zeitung, ARTE, Verkehrsgesellschaft Frankfurt am Main
