Käthe Kollwitz
1867–1945
Sculptor and Printmaker who carved the suffering of ordinary people into art — stripping war and poverty of their illusion.
She drew the people no one wanted to look at — the grieving mother, the hungry child, the worker bent under weight that was never going to lift. In an era when art celebrated power and beauty, Kollwitz turned her printmaking and sculpture toward the cost of both.
In 1914, her son was killed in the first months of World War I. She channeled that deep loss into work that gave shape to grief the world preferred to look away from.
Even after becoming the first woman ever elected to the Prussian Academy of Art, one of the most prestigious institutions in German art - she risked it all rather than stop making art that told the truth about power. She didn't protest from the margins. She did it from the inside and changed what art was allowed to say out loud.
Learn more
The Artist
Rhonda Van Pelt has been a creator for as long as she can remember. Her parents were artistic, and Rhonda drew and painted at every opportunity. She majored in visual arts and minored in history and English at the University of Southern Colorado. A few years after graduating, she returned to earn a degree in mass communications.
Since then, Rhonda has combined her passions to be a graphic designer and a writer, specializing in covering visual and performing arts. Currently, she keeps busy as an editor and writer for Colorado Media Group, but still finds time for her photography, painting and mixed-media art.
