GERMAN artist Kathe Kollwitz (1867-1945) was steeped in progressive politics and culture from childhood.

Her grandfather and father were socialists and her own lifelong conviction was reaffirmed through meeting the patients of her husband, Doctor Karl Kollwitz, in a working-class district of Berlin.
She managed to combine motherhood with a successful career as a teacher and artist without compromising her social and political beliefs.

Kollwitz had a traditional academic art education, in which oil paining topped the hierarchy of mediums, but she committed to printmaking because this better served her central aim of producing cheaply accessible works.