Self-Portrait with Hand of Death

Käthe Kollwitz, one of the great graphic artists in the history of printmaking, began her studies in Berlin in the late 1880s. In 1891, she married Karl Kollwitz, a doctor who worked in the slums of North Berlin. The couple lived in the community that Dr. Kollwitz served, and the people he treated provided rich subject matter for Kollwitz's art. The death of her son Peter in World War I led her to place new emphasis on the impact of war on women. Kollwitz was the first woman admitted to the Prussian Academy of Art (Preussische Akademie der Künste) in Berlin, but she was forced to leave her teaching post at the Academy when the Nazis came to power. A committed pacifist, Kollwitz's work spoke out against war, hunger, unemployment, and the impoverished working class. Kollwitz died April 22, 1945, just a few days before the Armistice.

During her long career, Kollwitz produced perhaps as many self-portraits as Rembrandt, turning her penetrating eye on her own visage and body from her student years to the time of her death. Self-Portrait with Hand of Death was made when Kollwitz was ill and depressed, a fact she recorded in her diary. In this rapid lithographic crayon sketch, the artist's well-defined and darkly outlined profile contrasts with the more lightly rendered closed eyes, drawn-up knees, and hunched body. Kollwitz's large hands are a focal point of the composition: her right hand reaches over her body to cover her left ear, seemingly in an effort to turn away from the disembodied hand of Death reaching out to touch her right shoulder.