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拍品專文
Dating from 1888, Stehende Frau, nach links is an important early charcoal drawing by Käthe Kollwitz, executed at a key moment in her artistic evolution. Focusing on a young woman in distress, the subject's entire body is taut with anxiety and despair as she clutches the wall behind her for support. The drawing forms part of an extensive series of preparatory works Kollwitz created for a painting inspired by Emile Zola’s celebrated novel, Germinal. A masterpiece of social realism, Germinal explores the tangled lives of a group of coalminers in northern France who, driven by severe poverty and oppression, begin an uprising which is violently quashed by the authorities. This project, although never realised, would occupy the artist for almost five years, allowed Kollwitz to explore the lives of ordinary people, a rich subject that would become a primary focus throughout her career.
Though Kollwitz had been interested in naturalist literature since her youth - driven by the publications of French, German and English authors she discovered in her father’s library - it was while studying painting in her early twenties at the Künstlerinnen-Verein München (Association of Women Artists in Munich) that the idea for a project focusing on Zola’s novel first came to mind. Kollwitz attended an informal artistic gathering known as a 'composition evening' alongside several of her fellow students, where each of the participants were challenged to create a drawing on a specific theme before the night’s end—on this occasion, the group were tasked with illustrating a fight. Kollwitz chose a scene of intense jealousy from Zola’s novel that, though not central to the plot, was filled with drama: 'in a smoky tavern, the young Catherine is being fought over by two men' Kollwitz explained (quoted in E. Prelinger, Käthe Kollwitz, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1992, p. 19). The resulting drawing won Kollwitz high praise, and cemented in her mind the future direction of her art. 'For the first time I felt established in my path,' she later wrote; 'great perspectives opened themselves to my fantasies and the night was sleepless with happy expectation' (ibid.).
In Stehende Frau, nach links Kollwitz trains her attention on the female protagonist, Catherine, as she watches the fight unfold. With one hand clasped to her mouth and her entire upper body tipped slightly forward, Kollwitz powerfully conveys the woman’s intense anxiety and fear, the subtle cues of her body language providing a window into her inner turmoil. Using richly variegated passages of soft charcoal, Kollwitz achieves an almost painterly quality in her depiction of light and shadow, while to the right of the sheet, the outline of another partial figure is visible, a study perhaps of the architecture of Catherine’s form beneath her simple dress.
Kollwitz had originally planned for these drawings to form the basis of a large oil painting dedicated to Zola’s novel. However, following her marriage and subsequent move to a small apartment in Berlin with little room for painting, the artist changed direction and embarked upon a series of etchings illustrating the narrative instead, marking her first experiments in printmaking. The dating of Stehende Frau, nach links to 1888 demonstrates that Kollwitz decided upon certain elements of the composition quickly, with the pose and form of the female protagonist translated almost exactly into the final print dedicated to Zola’s fight scene.
Though Kollwitz had been interested in naturalist literature since her youth - driven by the publications of French, German and English authors she discovered in her father’s library - it was while studying painting in her early twenties at the Künstlerinnen-Verein München (Association of Women Artists in Munich) that the idea for a project focusing on Zola’s novel first came to mind. Kollwitz attended an informal artistic gathering known as a 'composition evening' alongside several of her fellow students, where each of the participants were challenged to create a drawing on a specific theme before the night’s end—on this occasion, the group were tasked with illustrating a fight. Kollwitz chose a scene of intense jealousy from Zola’s novel that, though not central to the plot, was filled with drama: 'in a smoky tavern, the young Catherine is being fought over by two men' Kollwitz explained (quoted in E. Prelinger, Käthe Kollwitz, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1992, p. 19). The resulting drawing won Kollwitz high praise, and cemented in her mind the future direction of her art. 'For the first time I felt established in my path,' she later wrote; 'great perspectives opened themselves to my fantasies and the night was sleepless with happy expectation' (ibid.).
In Stehende Frau, nach links Kollwitz trains her attention on the female protagonist, Catherine, as she watches the fight unfold. With one hand clasped to her mouth and her entire upper body tipped slightly forward, Kollwitz powerfully conveys the woman’s intense anxiety and fear, the subtle cues of her body language providing a window into her inner turmoil. Using richly variegated passages of soft charcoal, Kollwitz achieves an almost painterly quality in her depiction of light and shadow, while to the right of the sheet, the outline of another partial figure is visible, a study perhaps of the architecture of Catherine’s form beneath her simple dress.
Kollwitz had originally planned for these drawings to form the basis of a large oil painting dedicated to Zola’s novel. However, following her marriage and subsequent move to a small apartment in Berlin with little room for painting, the artist changed direction and embarked upon a series of etchings illustrating the narrative instead, marking her first experiments in printmaking. The dating of Stehende Frau, nach links to 1888 demonstrates that Kollwitz decided upon certain elements of the composition quickly, with the pose and form of the female protagonist translated almost exactly into the final print dedicated to Zola’s fight scene.