The People (Das Volk), plate 7 of War

1923

Woodcut on Japanese paper, image 36 × 30 cm. Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Bielefeld

At the center of a tight huddle, a woman wrapped from head to foot guards with one hand the small child peering out of her cloth. The print comes from Kollwitz's woodcut series on the First World War.

Behind the series lies a loss shared with many families: her own son had died at the front.
Published in Dresden by Emil Richter in 1923, the portfolio gathers seven woodcuts begun in 1918 and finished by 1922 or 1923.
Look at how faces and hands float out of near-solid black, with almost nothing else described.
The woman's masklike face among contorted ones, and the rough gouged edges, make alarm rather than a story the subject of this woodcut.
This sheet is signed and numbered 36 of 100.

Image: Kunsthalle Bielefeld via museum-digital · Public Domain Mark