Posters

Käthe Kollwitz only created a total of 14 posters. Among them, though, are some of her best-known works, such as the lithograph »Never Again War« which was an icon of the peace movement well into the 1980s.

Her first two works, the »Poster for the Cottage Industry Exhibition« from 1906 and »For Greater Berlin« from 1912, scandalised the imperial court and were eventually banned.

The artist’s later posters were mostly composed between 1919 and 1926 during the Weimar Republic when the extent of her fame had reached a peak. These posters focus on the deprivation caused by the First World War and highlight the artist’s pacifist concerns.

Works

Käthe Kollwitz, Poster for the German Cottage Industry Exhibition in Berlin, 1906, crayon and brush lithograph with spray and scratch technique, Kn 95 III

Käthe Kollwitz, Poster »For Greater Berlin«, 1912, crayon and brush lithograph (transfer), Kn 122 I

Käthe Kollwitz, Poster »Vienna is dying! Save its Children!«, 1920, crayon lithograph in to two colours (transfer, text on ribbed laid paper), Kn 148 II

Käthe Kollwitz, Poster »Help Russia«, 1921, crayon lithograph (transfer), Kn 170 A I

Käthe Kollwitz, Poster »Germany’s Children are starving!«, 1923, crayon lithograph (transfer), Kn 202 B

Käthe Kollwitz, Poster »The Survivors«, before August 1923, crayon and brush lithograph with scratch technique (transfer), Kn 197 II b

Käthe Kollwitz, Poster »Never Again War«, 1924, crayon and brush lithograph (transfer), Kn 205 III b

Käthe Kollwitz, Poster against Paragraph 218, 1923, crayon lithograph (transfer of a drawing on transparent paper), Kn 198 II

Käthe Kollwitz, Poster »Mothers, share your Abundance!«, 1926, crayon lithograph (transfer), Kn 227 IIIb