MARIA DUARTE picks the best and worst of a crowded year of films
Kathe Kollwitz: a radical inspiration
CHRISTINE LINDEY pays tribute to one of the greatest printmakers of the 20th century, whose work opposing war and social injustice merits wider recognition
March of the Weavers, 1893-1897; Socialist Working-Class Youth poster Never Again War for the 10th anniversary of Germany starting WWI, 1924
JOSEPHINE BARBARO welcomes a diverse anthology of experiences by autistic women that amounts to a resounding chorus, demanding to be heard
PAUL BUHLE recommends an eminently useful book that examines the political opportunities for popular anti-fascist intervention
PETER MASON is entertained by the autobiography of Charlie Harper, one of punk’s most enduring figures
JAMIE BRITTON reaches for the sick bucket as he is forced to engorge detail after detail of the Royal Family’s wealth
STEVE JOHNSON picks his favourites from the many memorable albums of the year, and one stunning new festival
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.
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CHRISTINE LINDEY welcomes a film that focuses exclusively on women war artists, but deplores its omission of feminism, political context and Soviet anti-war art
From van Gogh to Sonia Boyce, from Hew Locke to Patrick Carpenter and... Pablo Picasso