Thursday, 16 July 2015

Kathe Kollwitz Museum in Cologne

Few artists who can arouse such intense emotion as Kathe Kollwitz, and not many art works are so much better in real life than in reproduction. She had an incredible mastery of her medium but what I especially love is her commitment to humanity. After visiting this museum, I find the kind of modernism which treats the body as pure form especially hollow and really did not want to see the largest collection of Pop Art outside the USA (even though Cologne has that too).

Kollwitz represented the harder parts of life, especially poverty and the suffering, death and degradation which all too often go with it. I think she understood that no matter what the circumstances, it isn't people who become dehumanized, though their representations, in the media, or in the minds of other people might.

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