Self Portrait with Hand on Brow

Although trained as a painter, Kollwitz went on to become a pioneering printmaker, working in etching, lithography, and woodcuts. Throughout her long career, she used her art practice to advocate for women and workers. Mothers, widows, and children were frequent subjects of hers, as was self-portraiture. We know from her diaries that she experienced deep depression following the death of her son Peter in 1914 in World War I. She candidly expressed this agony in her many self-portraits.