Crayon and brush lithograph with scratch technique in brown on grey Japan paper, Kn 74 II a
Like the French painter and graphic artist Eugène Carrière, Käthe Kollwitz carved out the figure from the dark background using a scraper in this lithograph. She only used this technique for the representation of the head and the hands which seem to float against the dark ground. The body disappears entirely in the mist of the background.
The dreamy, pensive, introspective look is also clearly inspired by Carrière. This work, in which the artist was mainly concerned with aesthetic questions, is also an example of her experiments with different coloured papers during that period, as prints on various different sheets are still extant.