Responding to the, in her words, ‘unspeakably difficult years’ of the First World War, between 1918 and 1923 Kollwitz worked on Krieg (War), a series no doubt shaped by autobiographical experiences. (She lost her youngest son in battle in 1914.) Employing a woodblock technique, Kollwitz adapted her classical style to produce opaque and exaggerated forms. The Widow II, 1922, depicts a mother catching her last breaths of life, a child, executed with barely a few lines, flung across her dying body.
