Woman with Dead Child 1903

In this poignant print, Kathe Kollwitz renders a mother embracing her lifeless child, a timeless tableau of sorrow etched in stark monochrome. The Pietà motif, resonant with Christian iconography, immediately springs to mind. Consider Michelangelo's sculpture—Mary cradling the body of Christ, an image of divine grief. Here, Kollwitz strips away the religious context, yet the primal emotion remains undiminished. The mother's hunched posture, her face buried in her child’s body, echoes countless depictions of mourning throughout history, each bearing witness to the universal human experience of loss. The enduring power of this image lies in its capacity to tap into our collective memory, triggering a visceral, subconscious recognition of shared suffering. This motif is not linear but cyclical, resurfacing across cultures and eras, each time imbued with new layers of meaning while retaining its fundamental emotional core.