In this essay I will be looking at the lives and compositions of two female artists Kathy Kollwitz and Meinrad Craighead. I have chosen these two artists because the art they produced dealt with two different subject matters. Both Kathy Kollwitz and Meinrad Craighead had strong preoccupations with the female experience in their art however Kathe Kollwitz art is dominated by the material and social experiences caused by poverty and marginalisation while Meinrad Craighead’s art is preoccupied with the internal and spiritual dimension.
Kathe Kollwitz was born Kathe Schmidt in East Prussia in 1867 into a religious family with a strong emphasis on social and moral issues and ideals, her Grandfather Rupp had a strong influence as a Lutheran minister but was expelled from the Church due to his radical views which clashed with the Athanasian Creed, he subsequently set up a Free Church. Growing up in this environment shaped the development of Kathe Kollwitz concerns as a young adult on social issues within her society. Her Father was aware of Kollwitz artistic abilities which he encouraged and she had the opportunity of developing her skills by having lessons in print making with artist Rudolph Maure, he taught her the techniques of etching and intaglio. At this time she was also exposed to the work of Hogarth in depicting the lives of the working class in 19th Century Britain, these two experiences along with the political and ethical influences of her family were to define and impact her as an artist in her adult life (Zigrosser,1969).
As a young adult she decided to pursue her artistic development and studied at the school for women artists in Berlin in 1884 (www.schoolnet.co.uk/artkkollwitz.htm). While studying art Kathe Kollwitz continued to be concerned over issues of social justice during this period she read two book that were to leave a deep impression on her, one by Arne Garborg entitled ‘From a Man’s World’ and a second by August Bebel ‘Women; Past, Present and Future’ that gave her an awareness of social democracy and feminist issues (Zigrosser, 1969, p. 10). These two books may have encouraged her to believe that as a woman she had the right to pursue her potential in a male dominated world as well as adding to her knowledge of the plight of women trapped in poverty. Through these developments her art was to become a depiction of the lived experiences of the poor and marginalised in society rather than a political statement.
This essay will now consider the response of both the ‘art world’ and the elite to the work of Kollwitz as her reputation grew.
The first significant pieces Kollwitz produced were inspired by Gerhart Hauptmann’s play ‘The Weavers’ in 1893 having researched the subject she produced a set of six images on The Weaver’s Revolt over the next four years, working and reworking her etchings until she finally produced a sequence representing the historical events that had taken place. The pieces are considered a landmark in class conscious art, for the first time the lived experience of oppression and the struggles of the worker were represented in mainstream art. This set was exhibited at the Berlin Art Exhibition in 1898 and caused a strong reaction, they were admired by the art world and she was put forward for the Gold Medal Award but this was vetoed by Kaiser Willhelm II who was infuriated by their social content and who called them “gutter art” (Zigrosser,1969 and Graham-Dixon, 2008, p. 410). ‘The Weaver Set’ went on to be exhibited in 1899 at Dresden being awarded a Gold Medal before being taken to London where again the work received official recognition. At the age of 30 Kollwitz was an established artist. This success spurred Kollwitz on into a particularly productive period and in the early 1900s having read Zimmerman’s studies on The Peasant War of 1522-25 she started production of a series of etchings based on this episode in history, she was particularly inspired by the account of a woman known as ‘Black Anna’ who had incited the revolt and an initial piece led to a commission in 1904 from Max Letz??? the director of the Dresden Kipferstich-Kabinett to do a series of etchings and lithographs on The Peasants War (www.googlebooks).
This essay will now will turn to the life and works of Meinrad Craighead, She was born Charlene Craighead in 1936, the oldest of three sisters. Growing up in The Great Depression life was hard, her Catholic parents were poor and uneducated and had to constantly move looking for work but despite this they provided a loving and secure environment (www.spiralmuse.org/artfeaturemc). As a youngster she loved the outdoors and being poor used mud and scraps of paper to express her creativity, her parents encouraged her art as best they could and for her twelfth birthday presented her with a drawing board. Her Grandmother’s background included Native American ancestors and she was a powerful storyteller, this had a profound influence on Meinrad’s imagination. At the age of seven Meinrad had a personal spiritual experience which was to profoundly affect her understanding of God, perceiving Her to be feminine. This experience left her with a profound sense of wellbeing that has never diminished. These early experiences shaped and defined her artistic interests and outputs throughout her life (www.spiralmuse.org/artfeaturemc).
As a young woman she pursued her artistic interests studying at the University of Iowa and Winsconsin achieving a Masters in Arts, she went on to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. She then went on to lecture at the University of Albuquerque in New Mexico and at the age of 24 her graphic work was widely exhibited with many of her woodcuts being held in permanent collections in the USA and Europe. In 1962 aged 26 she taught Art and Art History in Florence and in this period won many awards for her prints. In her late twenties having achieved academically and artistically she discovered that one of her ancestors had been a German monk whose tomb still attracted pilgrims, she was so moved by this that she changed her first name to his, Meinrad. Soon after this she sensed a ‘call’ to withdraw from her busy successful life and to enter the monastic orders joining Stanbrook Abbey, UK in 1966(www.spiralmuse.org/artfeaturemc). She stayed here 14 years devoting her self simultaneously to both a contemplative and artistic vocation. This move into a monastic life successfully intertwined all her previous experiences into one coherent whole.
Over this period Meinrad produced a book ‘The Sign of the Tree’ which used the tree as a symbol of the contemplative life and she sees the work in this book as being drawn from a “deeply personal exploration” (Craighead, 1979). This book draws on ancient and modern mythologies and religions to use the tree in both text and scraperboard images as a symbol of spirituality.
Bibliography.
Baugh, T., Brickley, P., Perryman, L-A., (2006) ‘Making sense of the arts’, Milton Keynes, The Open University.
Craighead, M. (1979) ‘The Sign of the Tree’ London, Imprint Books Ltd.
Graham-Dixon, A. (2008), ‘Art’ London, Dorling Kindersley.
www.artsconnected.org/resource/10420/march-of-the-weavers
www.schoolnet.co.uk/artkkollwitz.htm
www.spiralmuse.org/artfeaturemc
www.takver.com/art/art200703.htm
Zigrosser, C. (1969) ‘Prints and drawings of Kathe Kollwitz’, Mineola,N.Y, Dover Pub.
