Self Portrait

At the age of thirteen, Käthe Kollwitz began her formal artistic training by learning to make engravings and etchings. While her early print production primarily consists of designs executed in the intaglio medium, during the second half of her career she began making woodcuts. This 1924 self-portrait exemplifies Kollwitz’s ability to exploit the materiality of the woodcut medium by using an alternating pattern of inked relief lines with the white of the paper to evoke the texture of hair.

Kollwitz was a prolific printmaker, producing 275 etchings, woodcuts, and lithographs during her career. In 1919, she was the first woman elected to the Berlin Academy of Arts and was awarded the honorary title of professor. However, due to the anti-Nazi sentiments expressed in her artwork (a famous example is her poster, Never Again War! from 1924), she was finally expelled from the Berlin Academy in 1933.