33 Kathe Kollwitz Quotes

Kathe Kollwitz quotes

1. I have received a commission to make a poster against war. That is a task that makes me happy. Some may say a thousand times that this is not pure art.... but as long as I can work, I want to be effective with my art.

2. The working-class woman shows me much more than the ladies who are totally limited by conventional behavior. The working-class woman shows me her hands, her feet, and her hair. She lets me see the shape and form of her body through her clothes. She presents herself and the expression of her feelings openly, without disguises.

3. My work is not, of course, pure art in the sense that Schmidt-Rottluff's is, but it is art nonetheless... It is all right with me that my work serves a purpose. I want to have an effect on my time, in which human beings are so confused and in need of help.

4. I am gradually approaching the period in my life when work comes first. When both the boys went away for Easter, I hardly did anything but work. Worked, slept, ate and went for short walks. But above all I worked. And yet I wonder whether the 'blessing' is not missing from such work. No longer diverted by other emotions, I work the way a cow grazes.

5. For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying.

   Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.

6. There must be understanding between the artist and the people. In the best ages of art that has always been the case. Genius can probably run on ahead and seek out new ways. But the good artists who follow after genius - and I count myself among these - have to restore the lost connection once more.

7. I felt that I have no right to withdraw from the responsibility of being an advocate. It is my duty to voice the sufferings of people, the sufferings that never end and are as big as mountains.

8. I have been through a revolution, and I am convinced that I am no revolutionist. My childhood dreams of dying on the barricades will hardly be fulfilled, because I should hardly mount a barricade now that I know what they were like in reality. And so I know now what an illusion I lived in for so many years. I thought I was a revolutionary and was only an evolutionary. Yes, sometimes I do not know whether I am a socialist at all, whether I am not rather a democrat instead. How good it is when reality tests you to the guts and pins you relentlessly to the very position you always thought, so long as you clung to your illusion, was unspeakably wrong.

9. For me the Koenigsberg longshoremen had beauty; the Polish jimkes on their grain ships had beauty; the broad freedom of movement in the gestures of the common people had beauty. Middle-class people held no appeal for me at all. Bourgeois life on the whole seemed to me pedantic.

10. Every war already carries within it the war that will answer it. Every war is answered by a new war, until everything is smashed. That is why I am so wholeheartedly for a radical end to this madness and why my only hope is in world socialism.

11. Pacifism simply is not a matter of calm looking on; it is hard work.

1. Genius can probably run on ahead and seek out new ways. But the good artists who follow after genius - and I count myself among these - have to restore the lost connection once more.

2. It seems to me nowadays that the most important task for someone who is aging is to spread love and warmth whenever possible.

3. I want to cultivate the seed that was placed in me until the last small twig has grown.

4. Growing old is partly an inescapable process of accommodation and adjustment.

5. I am afraid of dying-but being dead, oh yes, that to me is often an appealing prospect.

6. It is my duty to voice the sufferings of humankind, the never-ending sufferings heaped mountain high. This is my task, but it is not an easy one to fulfill.

7. One day, a new ideal will arise, and there will be an end to all wars. I die convinced of this. It will need much hard work, but it will be achievedÂ… The important thing, until that happens, is to hold one's banner high and to struggleÂ… Without struggle there is no life.

8. When Michelangelo was an old man, he drew himself sitting in a child's pushcart.

9. To this day I do not know whether the power which has inspired my works is something related to religion, or is indeed religion itself.

10. Look at life with the eyes of a child.

11. How long were the stretches of toilsome tacking back and forth, of being blocked, of being thrown back again and again. But all that was annulled by the periods when I had my technique in hand and succeeded in doing what I wanted.

12. For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone isalways stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying.

13. There are moments on most days when I feel a deep and sincere gratitude, when I sit at the open window, and there is a blue sky or moving clouds.

14. I have never been able to carry out any work coolly. On the contrary it is done, so to speak, with my own blood. Anyone who looks at my works must be able to sense that.

15. While I drew, and wept along with the terrified children I was drawing, I really felt the burden I am bearing. I felt that I have no right to withdraw from the responsibility of being an advocate.

16. Recently I began reading my old diaries. Back to before the war. Gradually I became very depressed. The reason for that is probably that I wrote only when there were obstacles and halts to the flow of life, seldom when everything was smooth and even. ... As I read I distinctly felt what a half-truth a diary presents.

17. As in everything else, I find that age is not good for much, that one becomes deafer and less sensitive. Also, the higher up the mountain you climb, the less of a view you get. A mist closes in and cheats you of the hoped-for and expected opportunity to see far and wide.

18. I can always paint very well with my eyes, but with my hands it doesn't always work out.

19. Where do all the women who have watched so carefully over the lives of their beloved ones get the heroism to send them to face the cannon?

20. Old ideas die hard. We've had thousands of years of women having almost no rights. Parts of the world are in a struggle toward very basic human rights for women, and most of the world isn't even there yet. And it's going to take a long time to change these attitudes.

21. I do not want to die... until I have faithfully made the most of my talent and cultivated the seed that was placed in me, until the last small twig has grown.

22. I was put in this world to change it.