Mother with a Child in her Arms, final version, 1916

Crayon lithograph (transfer), Kn 136 A II

Käthe Kollwitz, Mother with a Child in her Arms, final version, 1916, crayon lithograph (transfer), Kn 136 A II, Cologne Kollwitz Collection © Käthe Kollwitz Museum Köln

In this work, Käthe Kollwitz depicted an intimate and happy mother-child relationship – possibly as a poignant contrast to war and mourning.

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What is left for the mother? One boy on the right, one on the left – my right-hand and my left-hand boy, as they called themselves. One is dead, the other so far away that I cannot help him. My entire life as a mother is really over already. And I have such terrible longing for this life. To have my children – my boys – back, one on the right, one on the left, and to dance with them as in the old days when spring came and Peter brought back flowers and we danced a spring dance.«
Käthe Kollwitz, Diaries, 17 January 1916

A second, larger edition of this lithograph was published in Bildermann in 1916 (No. 2, 20 April 1916) by Paul Cassirer.

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