Portrait Printmaking

Compare these two printmakers. What do they have in common and how do they differ? Look at their lives, time they lived, what they were influenced by and their artistic style. Which do you like better? Explain your answers fully.

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Käthe Kollwitz, Superprintmaker

Woman in the Lap of Death, woodcut by Käthe Kollwitz, 1921

Speaking of making the world a better place, Käthe Kollwitz was an artist who tried to do just that…  And unfortunately, her world was in need of an awful lot of bettering.  Born in Germany in 1867, one of Kollwitz's sons was killed in World War I and a grandson was killed in World War II.  Her husband was a doctor who worked with the poor, providing her with a constant view of the suffering caused by social injustice, as well as a respect for the beauty and bravery of these hard-working people.  In 1920 she became the first woman elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts, but she

Hunger, woodcut by Kollwitz, 1925

was forced to resign by the Nazis when they came to power.  She died in 1945 just before the end of World War II.

Kollwitz's radical father encouraged his daughter's drawing talent and arranged for her to have art lessons.  When she went to an art school for women in Berlin she decided that painting was not her strength, and began doing etchings and other printmaking techniques.  A little later, looking for more strength and power in her images, she also took up woodcuts.  Her prints were widely acclaimed, and her international fame and popularity were such that although the Nazis threatened her, they did not arrest her.

Mary and Elisabeth, woodcut by Kollwitz, 1928

        

Although so much of her work focusses on tragic themes, Kollwitz's art is not unrelieved doom and gloom.  Here is a lovely one showing Elizabeth and Mary from the gospel of Luke, two pregnant woman greeting each other and sharing their profound awe and joy.  (Of course, both these mothers lost their sons, a theme Kollwitz knew all too well.)

Self-Portrait, woodcut by Kollwitz, 1924

        Kollwitz also made self-portraits throughout her life, so that we can see her in different moods and as she ages.  Sometimes she looks beautiful, sometimes bleak.  I particularly like this one, done in 1924 when she was around 57.

        Although Kollwitz suffered from periodic bouts of depression and had so much cause for despair in the world she saw around her, she never stopped trying to use her art to wake people up to the tragedies of injustice and cruelty.

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Andy Warhol

American painter, printmaker, sculptor, draughtsman, illustrator, film maker, writer and collector. After studying at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh from 1945 to 1949, he moved to New York and began working as a commercial artist and illustrator for magazines and newspapers. Warhol continued to support himself through his commercial work until at least 1963, but from 1960 he determined to establish his name as a painter. Motivated by a desire to be taken as seriously as the young artists whose work he had recently come to know and admire, especially Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, he began by painting a series of pictures based on crude advertisements and on images from comic strips. These are among the earliest examples of Pop Art.

In the 1960s a new artistic style overtook New York. Known as Pop Art and defined by its cool impersonality, this style embraced American popular culture, utilizing comics, tabloid photographs, and movie stills as artistic inspiration. Perhaps the best-known Pop artist was Andy Warhol, who conceived a new idea of the artist as celebrity.

Andy Warhol

1966. Silkscreen ink on synthetic polymer paint on nine canvases

Each canvas 22 1/2 x 22 1/2" (57.2 x 57.2 cm), 

overall 67 5/8 x 67 5/8" (171.7 x 171.7 cm)

Self-Portrait (1966) was constructed in what would become one of Warhol’s signature styles—a grid of bright, repeated silkscreenedprimary and secondary colors as well as different shades of the same color. portraits. An expert colorist, Warhol paired

ANDY WARHOL
American, 1928 - 1987
Self-Portrait , 1986
Acrylic screen print on canvas 80 x 80 inches

In the latter part of his career, Warhol focused more and more on portraiture.  He created portraits of people he admired—musicians Michael Jackson and Grace Jones, athletes O.J. Simpson and Muhammed Ali—as well as wealthy socialites he met on the New York social circuit. By the mid-1960s, Warhol had amassed a huge public following of artists, filmmakers, performers, writers, and art patrons seduced by his persona. Engaging in the painting of self-portraits only further cultivated his fame. In time, Warhol’s self-portraits became as famous as the iconic portraits of Marilyn Monroe or Elizabeth Taylor. The artist had himself become a celebrity. He used these portraits not only to question the originality of the artistic image but also to explore themes of death, celebrity, and postwar culture.

In this ghost-like self-portrait, produced a few months before his death, Warhol stares out at the viewer with an impenetrable glare. The artist’s disembodied head floats against an inky black background, his image silkscreened in a pale violet. Slack-jawed and wearing a platinum fright wig, Warhol likens his face to a skull or death mask.