Minneapolis Institute of Art

Woman with Folded Hands

Käthe Kollwitz

Date

1898

Medium

Etching, before steel facing of the plate

Department

European Art

Institution

Minneapolis Institute of Art

Kollwitz spent the mid-1890s working on a cycle of etchings and lithographs called A Weavers' Revolt or simply The Weavers, inspired by a play by Gerhart Hauptmann about an 1844 uprising of weavers in Silesia, first performed in 1893. In the process, she made and then rejected many drawings and prints, favoring the most dramatic for inclusion among the six finally published as a portfolio. Woman with Folded Hands was one of those set aside, probably because it was too quiet and non-narrative for the portfolio. The etching is nonetheless a quietly powerful invocation of a woman in despair and proved successful as an independent work of art. Germany, Europe

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