Crayon lithograph (transfer), Kn 209 b
This lithograph, created in 1924, bears witness to a private crisis in the artist’s life when she increasingly felt the effects of getting old and her declining physical strength.
The shaded eyes with their emphasised pouches making the artist look tired and exhausted can also be seen in the charcoal self-portrait NT 988. Kollwitz herself was evidently uncertain about the year of origin of this drawing as she only dated it years later and put a question mark behind the date. But it seems that a connection to the 1924 lithograph suggested itself to her as well.
Despite the intimacy of the moment depicted here, the artist had the lithograph published as part of a portfolio for the fourth annual gift of the Kreis graphischer Künstler und Sammler by the publisher Arndt Beyer, Leipzig, 1924. Today, this is her most famous self-portrait.
Käthe Kollwitz, Self-portrait en face, 1923?, charcoal on tracing paper, NT 988