The Survivors 1923

Kathe Kollwitz made this lithograph poster of vulnerable faces sometime in the first half of the 20th century. The dark, heavy strokes feel both urgent and deeply sad. I can imagine Kollwitz at work, driven by grief, trying to figure out a way of visually expressing this terrible emotion of loss. What must it have been like to put ink to stone, again and again, searching for the right weight of line, the perfect angle to capture these expressions? The medium of lithography lends itself so well to the grainy darkness, adding to the mood. The way the faces cluster together reminds me of the paintings of Ensor or Munch, those artists similarly obsessed with representing raw, human emotion through expressive faces. We can see that Kollwitz is in conversation with them, borrowing and building on what they started. It’s as if these artists are all asking themselves, “How can I make marks that scream?”