Kathe Kollwitz

• 1867-1945
• Regarded as one of the most important German artists of the 20th century.
• Born 1867 in Konisburg, East Prussia.
• She studied art in Berlin and began making etchings in 1880. 
• 1898-1903 taught at the Berlin School of Woman Artists.
• 1910 began to produce sculpture.
• 1914 son Peter was killed in Flanders, his death contributed to her socialist and pacifist political ideals.
• The artist believed art should reflect the time it is made in, her works reflected her concern with war, poverty, women and the lives of the working class.
• She became the first woman elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts, however she was expelled from the academy when Hitler came to power.

The Parents (1932) - Kathe Kollwitz

• In 1932 the war memorial to her son Peter was dedicated at Vladslo Military Cemetery. The piece was entitled "The Parents".
• The idea of this memorial was formed in 1914 with the initial composition of the son's body outstretched, father at the head and mother at the feet. However in 1919 the project was temporarily put aside.
• It was 12 years later that the piece was at last erected. The work was exhibited at the National Galery in Berlin. It was then moved to Belgium where it was placed adjacent to her son's grave.
• The work is a reminder that war does not end on the day it is declared over; for the ordinary person it carried on long beyond that date.
• The grief of a parent and loss became central themes of Kollwitz work, depicting the turmoil and consequences of war.
• The parents in the sculpture are depicted kneeling, mother is bent forward in her grief, head down, hiding her expression. The father stares ahead, forcing the viewer to confront his pain. 

There is no artist's signature, no location in time or space - only the universal sadness of two aged people, surrounded by the dead like 'a flock of lost children'. The phrase is Kathe Kollwitz's own.

• Her work also focuses on guilt and responsibility, particularly of older generations to the younger. Particularly in the case of the young people killed at war Kollwitz felt that the young people had been betrayed.
• Her work often references the grief of the Virgin Mary, drawing inspiration from the Pieta and its composition.

Self Portrait (1923) woodcut - Kathe Kollwitz


 
Help Russia! (1921) transfer lithograph - Kathe Kollwitz


life-sized copy of Kathe Kollwitz' sculpture, in memory of those who died in World War Two.

Pyotr Konchalovsky

• Born February 21st 1876 in Slavyansk.
• Russian painter, graphic artist.
• Early works were inspired by Cezanne but moved towards Socialist Realism. 
• He studied drawing at an art school in Kharkov, Ukraine, Moscow and St. Petersburg.
• From the Moscow School he gained its predisposition for corporeality and approach to colour.
• He briefly studied at the Academie Julian in Paris, his work melded two very rich traditions of painting.
• In 1909 with Aristarkh Lentulov and Ilya Mashkov he founded the avant garde group "Jack of Diamonds".
• Considered the creator of Russian Cezannism, this style he then merged with first primitivism, cubism and then Venetian painting.

Self Portrait with wife (1928) - Pyotr Konchalovsky

Portait of Vsevolod Meyerhold (1938) - Pyotr Konchalovsky.

Kuzma Petrov Vodkin

• Russian and Soviet painter and writer.
• Born into family of a local shoemaker in a small town on the River Volga.
• His first works were icons and landscapes produced in oil paint. He was inspired by the works of local icon and sign painters who let him observe them at work.
• Having failed his college entrance exams he turned to art classes by Fedor Burov, founder of the first art school in Samara.
• Following the death of Burov he studied at the Baron Stieglitz School in St. Petersburg, later switching to the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.
• In the late 19th/early 20th century symbolism was the current trend, however Petrov was dissatisfied with this form of expression. 
• After finishing 7 years at the Moscow school Vodkin was encouraged to go abroad. In Munich he took classes at the Anton Aschbe. He also visited Italy, France and Northern Africa. 
• In 1906 he met Maria Iovanovic, they married and in 1908 returned to Russia, St. Petersburg where they had one daughter.
• His early works were heavily inspired by French and German symbolism, however he broke away from symbolism turning instead to recognise and display the beauty of his homeland's landscape, culture and people.

 

Bathing of the Red Horse,1912 - Kuzma Petrov Vodkin.

• The work that made him famous.
• simple plot.
• colours bright, red dominating
• scene appears static however tension is evident.
• based on contrasts

• At the beginning of the 1900s his works were an attempt to synthesize Western and Eastern painting.
• He developed the theory of "spherical perspective", this used the incline of the vertical axis to turn planes towards the viewer, helped to cover large spaces, convey motion and could be viewed from different perspectives.
• Through the 1920s he continued to explore perspective and composition in his work.
• He experimented with colour, with red, blue and yellow as the basis for uniting forms and grounds.

Portrait of Lenin (1934) - Kuzma Petrov Vodkin

• Petrov Vodkin  tried to display a humanistic view of life, creating many portraits such as the one above.
• He placed the individual traits of the sitter in the background, the sitter is shown as a thoughtful observer, blending with their surroundings.
• The artist had to give up painting for several years after contracting tuberculosis, the smell of oil paints aggravated his lungs.
• He died on the 15th February 1939, he was swiftly fogotten by the Soviet era, only to be rediscovered in the last 2 decades.