Kathe Kollwitz

The Mothers 1918

Kathe Kollwitz (German) 187-1945. She was a German painter, printmaker and sculptor. She used drawing, etching, lithography, and woodcut to express the struggles of modern life during the beginning of the 20th century embracing visions of poverty, hunger, and war. Her later work took on a more expressionistic role.

She attended the Berlin School of Art in 1884, and later she went to study in Munich. Throught the Nazi regime she was forbidden to exhibit her work, which was classified as "degenerate." Her work is representative of her stron gsocial concience, formed whilst living in the poorest areas of Berling with her husband Dr Karl Kallowitz.

Giorgia O Keffe

Poppy 1927

Geogia O Keffe (American) 1887-1986.

She painted representational flowers, shells, bones and landscapes incoporating abstractness. She said that her truest and consistent visual sources were in the American Southwest. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, and then later at the Art Students League in New York. She taught at Columbia College, where she taught the theories of her mentor, painter and writer, Arthur Wesley Dow.

She was married to the photographer Alfred Stieglitz in 1929, and they begun a collaborative carrer.

She was forced to stop painting in the late 1970's due to her failing eyesight, she died aged 98.

Paula Modersohn Becker

Mother and Child 1906


Paula Modersohn Becker (German) 1879-1907 German painter who lived in a small village called Worpswede. There she took lessons from Fritz Mackensen, who along with other artists had retreated there in protest against the academy tradition.
She mad extended trips to Paris between 1900 and 1907, where she took courses at teh Ecole des Beaux Arts. She was influenced by Van Gogh, Gaugin and Cezanne. She had a child in novemebr 1907, but died about 3 weks later.