The comprehensive monograph »Käthe Kollwitz. A Survey of Her Works 1888–1942« will be published in March of 2022. With over 200 illustrations, the book presents the world-famous major works from the artist’s oeuvre spanning more than five decades – a representative selection from the Kollwitz Collection in Cologne.

To accompany the book launch, Hannelore Fischer will open the archive drawers of the world’s largest Kollwitz collection for her last show as long-time director of the Käthe Kollwitz Museum Köln. Together with her team, she has put together an exhibition with a dual scope, so to speak: while the artist’s classics can be seen as outstanding illustrations in the catalogue available for perusal in the exhibition space, lesser-known and rarely or never before shown treasures from the collection will complement the fourteen chapters on the wall. In many contexts, sketches and preparatory drawings, studies and proofs will allow us to trace the genesis of the main works. The reverse sides of well-known drawings will be also presented for the first time and tell previously hidden stories.

»Kollwitz Context« invites visitors to discover the oeuvre behind the artist’s masterpieces. In her thirty-two-year tenure, Hannelore Fischer has not only succeeded in building a collection that is unique in its density. Within the collection, it has also been possible to create focal points that make it possible to peek over the artist’s shoulder, as it were, as she creates. Get ready to be amazed by the versatility of Kollwitz’s oeuvre!