Käthe Kollwitz quotes

Käthe Kollwitz was a German artist renowned for her powerful prints, drawings, and sculptures addressing themes of war, poverty, and social injustice. Her deeply emotional works gave a voice to the suffering and struggles of ordinary people. She continues to inspire generations with her empathetic approach and commitment to human rights. Here are 24 of her quotes:

I have received a commission to make a poster against war. That is a task that makes me happy. Some may say a thousand times that this is not pure art.... but as long as I can work, I want to be effective with my art.

Käthe Kollwitz

Pacifism simply is not a matter of calm looking on; it is hard work.

Käthe Kollwitz

While I drew, and wept along with the terrified children I was drawing, I really felt the burden I am bearing. I felt that I have no right to withdraw from the responsibility of being an advocate.

Käthe Kollwitz

Look at life with the eyes of a child.

Käthe Kollwitz

I thought I was a revolutionary and was only an evolutionary.

Käthe Kollwitz

For me the Koenigsberg longshoremen had beauty; the Polish jimkes on their grain ships had beauty; the broad freedom of movement in the gestures of the common people had beauty. Middle-class people held no appeal for me at all. Bourgeois life on the whole seemed to me pedantic.

Käthe Kollwitz

Every war already carries within it the war that will answer it. Every war is answered by a new war, until everything is smashed. That is why I am so wholeheartedly for a radical end to this madness and why my only hope is in world socialism.

Käthe Kollwitz

The working-class woman shows me much more than the ladies who are totally limited by conventional behavior. The working-class woman shows me her hands, her feet, and her hair. She lets me see the shape and form of her body through her clothes. She presents herself and the expression of her feelings openly, without disguises.

Käthe Kollwitz

I felt that I have no right to withdraw from the responsibility of being an advocate. It is my duty to voice the sufferings of people, the sufferings that never end and are as big as mountains.

Käthe Kollwitz

For work, one must be hard and thrust outside of oneself what one has lived through.

Käthe Kollwitz

My work is not, of course, pure art in the sense that Schmidt-Rottluff's is, but it is art nonetheless... It is all right with me that my work serves a purpose. I want to have an effect on my time, in which human beings are so confused and in need of help.

Käthe Kollwitz

There must be understanding between the artist and the people. In the best ages of art that has always been the case. Genius can probably run on ahead and seek out new ways. But the good artists who follow after genius - and I count myself among these - have to restore the lost connection once more.

Käthe Kollwitz

No longer diverted by other emotions, I work the way a cow grazes.

Käthe Kollwitz

Genius can probably run on ahead and seek out new ways. But the good artists who follow after genius - and I count myself among these - have to restore the lost connection once more.

Käthe Kollwitz

It is my duty to voice the suffering of men, the never-ending sufferings heaped mountain-high.

Käthe Kollwitz

There must be understanding between the artist and the people.

Käthe Kollwitz

It is all right with me that my work serves a purpose. I want to have an effect on my time, in which human beings are so confused and in need of help.

Käthe Kollwitz

I am gradually approaching the period in my life when work comes first.

Käthe Kollwitz

I have been through a revolution, and I am convinced that I am no revolutionist.

Käthe Kollwitz

To this day I do not know whether the power which has inspired my works is something related to religion, or is indeed religion itself.

Käthe Kollwitz

The artist is usually a child of his times, especially if his formative years fell in the period of early socialism. My formative years coincided with that period, and I was totally caught up in the socialist movement. At that time, the idea of a conscious commitment to serve the proletariat was the farthest thing from my mind. But what use to me were principles of beauty like those of the Greeks, for example, principles that I could not feel as my own and identify with? The simple fact of the matter was that I found the proletariat beautiful.

Käthe Kollwitz