MMaxi

Käthe Schmidt Kollwitz (July 8, 1867 – April 22, 1945) was a German painter, printmaker, and sculptor whose work offered an eloquent and often searing account of the human condition in the first half of the 20th century. Her empathy for the less fortunate, expressed most famously through the graphic means of drawing, etching, lithography, and woodcut, embraced the victims of poverty, hunger, and war. Initially her work was grounded in Naturalism, and later took on Expressionistic qualities.

After her return Kollwitz continued to exhibit her work, but was impressed by the work of younger compatriots--the Expressionists and Bauhaus--and resolved to simplify her means of expression. Subsequent works such as Runover, 1910, and Self-Portrait, 1912, show this new direction. She also continued to work on sculpture.

Kollwitz lost her youngest son Peter on the battlefield in World War I in October of 1914, prompting a prolonged depression. By the end of the year she had made drawings for a monument to Peter and his fallen comrades; she destroyed the monument in 1919, and began again in 1925. The memorial, entitled The Grieving Parents, was finally completed and placed in the Belgian cemetery of Roggevelde in 1932. Later, when Peter's grave was moved to the nearby Vladslo, the statues were also moved.

In 1917, on her fiftieth birthday, the galleries of Paul Cassirer provided a retrospective exhibition of one hundred and fifty drawings by Kollwitz.

Kollwitz was a committed socialist and pacifist, who was eventually attracted to communism; her political and social sympathies found expression in the "memorial sheet for Karl Liebknecht", and in her involvement with the Arbeitsrat für Kunst, a part of the Social Democratic Party government in the first few weeks after the war. As the war wound down and a nationalistic appeal was made for old men and children to join the fighting, Kollwitz implored in a published statement:

"There has been enough of dying! Let not another man fall!"

Anonymous

Max Pechstein

Max Hermann Pechstein (December 31, 1881 - June 29, 1955), was a German expressionist painter and printmaker, born in Zwickau.

Early contact with the art of Vincent Van Gogh stimulated his development toward expressionism. After studying art in Dresden, Pechstein met Erich Heckel and joined the art group Die Brücke in 1906. He was the only member to have formal art training. Later in Berlin, he helped to found the Neue Sezession and gained recognition for his decorative and colorful paintings that were lent from the ideas of Van Gogh, Matisse, and the Fauves. His paintings eventually became more primitive, incorporating thick black lines and angular figures.

Beginning in 1933, Pechstein was attacked by the Nazis because of his art. 326 of his paintings were removed from German museums. 16 of his works were displayed in the Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition of 1937. During this time, Pechstein went into seclusion in rural Pomerania.

He was a prolific printmaker, producing 421 lithographs, 315 woodcuts and linocuts, and 165 intaglio prints, mostly etchings.

Pechstein was a professor at the Berlin Academy for ten years before his dismissal by the Nazis in 1933. He was reinstated in 1945, and subsequently won numerous titles and awards for his work.

Spanish title: Aquellos polbos

See the result: From such dust dirt must come. For shame, to treat her in such fashion!
She who has waited on everyone for a trifle, she who was so industrious, so useful;
she was an honorable woman.

Spanish title: Pobrecitas!

They will have to repair what has long been going from bad to worse, to fix what has been forced apart.

• Smoking Ban | 09-07-2008
• Under the bridge | 30-06-2008
• A day out | 30-06-2008
• Check the link Below | 11-06-2008
• Urban Amsterdam | 06-06-2008
• Obama Gets the nomination. | 04-06-2008
• A Pair of Skating Owls | 25-05-2008
• Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn | 24-05-2008
• Laser 3.14 | 22-05-2008
• Passeio | 22-05-2008
• Hairpin Lalique | 21-05-2008
• Dioxyd Adventure Amsterdam April 08 | 27-04-2008
• Down memory lane | 20-04-2008
• MMaxi08 Amsterdam Urban | 08-04-2008
• MMaxi08 Urban Amsterdam | 08-04-2008