In 2024, the museum will move into its final, larger exhibition space on the first floor of the theatre building and will have space for temporary exhibitions in addition to the permanent presentation of Käthe Kollwitz’s work. To cover the time without special exhibitions until then, the “Intervention” format has been created. Selected, special Kollwitz sheets from private collections will complement the general overview of her work in the exhibition “And yet it is art”.
The museum will be showing “Discarded Versions War” from 25 August 2023. Käthe Kollwitz began to work in graphic art again after a long time in January 1918. The loss of her younger son Peter as a war volunteer in the First World War had hit her and her husband hard. Many of Peter’s friends and acquaintances also fell in the course of the war and the idea of “working the war stuff in context” grew in the artist – she had a whole cycle in mind. The first etchings and lithographs were created and, after several reworkings, were finally discarded until she found the final form with the technique of the woodcut, which was new to her.
The intervention on the rejected versions of the cycle War presents the artist’s path in a vivid and exciting way. Thanks to support from private collections, various versions and condition prints of a motif can be shown and the artist’s working method can be traced on some of the sheets of the Krieg cycle from the sketch to the final print.
The first of three “Interventions” on the theme of “Mother and Child” started on 15 March 2023. The occasion was the return of the original plaster sculpture “Mother with Two Children” by Käthe Kollwitz at the end of February from the exhibition “Torn Modernism” at the Kunstmuseum Basel. During the museum move, the large sculpture had gone on a journey and was finally able to take up its new place in the permanent exhibition at its new location. It was now surrounded by drawings and rare prints on the theme of “Mother and Child” until mid-May. These are depictions in which Käthe Kollwitz recorded intimate observations between mother and child, and which illustrate her artistic elaboration into print works and even sculptural work. A glimpse into the artist’s workshop is thus possible. In winter, there will be another intervention on the theme of “Simplicissimus”.
Accompanying the three exhibition interventions, there will be Slow Art guided tours as an after-work date with Käthe Kollwitz. The next date for “Discarded Versions War” will be on 5 October 2023 at 18.00. See further information on the homepage in the section Art Experience.