Artistic Statement
Why I’m Recreating Käthe Kollwitz’s Krieg Series
Having spent over 90% of my adult life in the creative arts, I’ve often wondered, especially during times of global crisis and turmoil whether being an artist is ultimately a selfish act. Shouldn’t I be doing something more direct: becoming a doctor, a firefighter, a social worker, or an on-the-ground advocate for humanitarian causes?
In moments of political unrest and widespread suffering, it can feel almost frivolous to sit down and create. The act of spinning something meaningful out of thin air sometimes feels impossible. The emotions are too complex, too raw, and the world moves too fast for art to keep up in a way that feels genuinely relevant.
Yet history shows us repeatedly that art does make a difference. It can bear witness, process collective grief, and preserve what makes life meaningful even when everything else is burning. A mentor once reminded me that not everyone is called to be the firefighter. Someone has to create and protect the culture, the beauty, and the meaning that remains once the immediate fire is out.
About 18 months ago I first deeply encountered Käthe Kollwitz’s life and work. One of her central masterpieces is the Krieg (War) portfolio seven woodcuts from 1922–23. These prints do not glorify battle or show machines of war. Instead, they reveal the invisible toll on those who never see combat: the widow, the huddled mothers, the grieving parents clutching each other until they almost become one in sorrow, and the mother offering her child as a sacrifice.
What moves me most is their timelessness. The faces and gestures could belong to any era, including our own. The hands gripping in pain, protecting, or simply holding on, carry as much emotional weight as the faces themselves. Kollwitz created these works after losing her son Peter in World War I, channeling personal grief into a universal statement against the psychological devastation of war.
As a printmaker and musician, I’m drawn to the structured nature of printmaking. Unlike the sometimes paralyzing freedom of pure composition, printmaking allows the design and composition to be planned in advance. The carving itself becomes a kind of performance as a translation of vision into physical marks, each gouge carrying its own character, much like an instrumentalist’s unique sound.
Rather than trying to invent something new in response to the times, I decided to immerse myself in a work of profound importance. I wanted to know Kollwitz’s Krieg series intimately — not just by looking at digital images or museum prints, but by recreating the entire portfolio by hand.
This is a longstanding tradition in both printmaking and the performing arts: taking a powerful existing work and bringing it to life again because it still resonates so deeply. Kollwitz herself believed in wide access; she produced affordable editions so her prints could reach ordinary people, not just collectors. Now that her work is in the public domain, I’m undertaking this as a serious master study: carving the full series at the same scale, on similar papers, staying as faithful as possible while working in my native medium of linoleum.
It will be roughly 700 hours of labor. I plan to pull 50 prints of each of the seven plates. I need to feel the ink, the paper, and every carved detail under my own hands. Only then can I truly share the emotional and physical impact of these monumental statements with others.
This is not an attempt at exact replication for any deceptive purpose. It is a homage, a deep study in composition, mark-making, and emotional truth. As I begin releasing the prints, 25% of net revenue from each will go toward humanitarian relief efforts supporting women and children affected by current conflicts.
We live in a period that feels anomalous. For the first time in many generations, we are seeing per capita civilian casualties, especially among women and children, at levels not witnessed since the Second World War. Progress in reducing famine and hunger has reversed in troubling ways. At just over the 100-year anniversary of Kollwitz’s Krieg series, the scenes on her plates feel all too familiar.
In every dark chapter of history, artists have stood as witnesses against senseless violence. By immersing myself in this masterpiece and bringing it forward again through my own hands, I hope to honor Kollwitz’s legacy, process our shared grief, and remind others that art can still serve as a necessary act of resistance, remembrance, and humanity.
Never again war.
