Käthe Kollwitz Museum Köln
Neumarkt 18-24 / Neumarkt Passage
50667 Köln
+49 (0)221 227 2899
+49 (0)221 227 2602
museum@77e1e5d1687248789c095b606636e378kollwitz.de
Tue - Sun
11 am – 6 pm
Public holidays
First Thu each month
11 am – 8 pm
Mon
closed
The Käthe Kollwitz Museum's exhibition rooms are temporarily closed due to extensive renovation work.
Insights into private Kollwitz collections
The large number of private Kollwitz collections worldwide reflect the enduring fascination with the artist’s work. What is the source of this enthusiasm? The summer exhibition at the Käthe Kollwitz Museum in Cologne will feature three collectors talking about their passion for Käthe Kollwitz and providing photographic insights into their lives with the artist’s often less than easily digestible artistic fare. Interviews with the collectors will highlight their individual relationship with the artist and her works. They will each present 10 to 15 selected works from their collections and explain why these occupy a special place in their lives.For a Cologne collector – a business woman and mother of four children – it was a spur-of-the-moment visit to a gallery exhibition that triggered her enthusiasm: “I was just completely enthralled and I’ve been in the grip of my fascination with the artist ever since”. Among her favourite works are mother-and-child groups as well as depictions of the situation of working class people: “Her works touch me, they go under the skin. Her themes are also my life-themes.”One of the first folios bought by a couple from North-Rhine Westphalia who have a medical practice was related to their everyday work – a doctor’s surgery. Since then, the artist has become part of the family’s life: “Everything in the work of the artist comes across as authentic – the despair, but also the perseverance and the moments of sheer joie-de-vivre”. Another couple, Swiss lawyers, are touched by the artist’s tenacious struggle to give artistic expression to the human condition: “We are fascinated by the juxtaposition of works that illustrate the genesis of an artistic realisation. It enables us to look over the artist’s shoulder and witness how she developed a motif”.