Gefallen (Original Title) 1920

Kathe Kollwitz made this drawing called Gefallen with charcoal, and look at how she really digs into that material! There’s a raw, searching quality here, as if Kollwitz is trying to wrestle something from the paper. The lines aren't precious. They’re all about feeling. See how the charcoal bunches together, almost like a bruise, around the mother’s head? It’s like the weight of the world is pressing down on her. You can almost feel the texture of the charcoal, the way it grabs onto the paper. And that adds to the emotional intensity. It reminds me of some of Goya’s drawings; they both use mark-making to convey the darkest parts of the human experience. The beauty of art is how it lets us sit with the uncomfortable, the unresolved, and the ambiguous.