Gender, Legends and Art Women, Farmers, Workers, Rebels

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Gender, Legends and Art Women, Farmers, Workers,
Rebels

• Vesa Matteo Piludu

University of Helsinki Department of Art Research
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Millet Gleaners 1857
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Angelus
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Shepherdess with Her Flock1864
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TitleThe WeedersDate 1868
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Song of the Lark, 1884
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Woman Sewing by Lamplight 1870
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Jean Francois Millet - 1850
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Millet Winnower 1847-8
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Courbet, The grain Sifters
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Gustave Courbet, Sleeping spinner 1857
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A woman Asleep 1657
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Daumier, Honor Laveuse au Quai d'Anjou
(Laundress on the Quai d'Anjou) c. 1860
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Daumier, Honor The Burden (The Laundress) c.
1850-53
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Degas, women ironig
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Degas

• Degas penetrating observation, captured subtle
  differences in peoples faces and body language
  (especially within different economic classes).
• Degas respected the hard-working immigrants from
  Eastern Europe, especially working women.

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Woman ironing', Edgar Degas, c.1890

• The art of Degas was that of a 'Naturalist',
  depicting what was considered vulgar
• laundresses were commonly thought of as
  borderline prostitutes - in a way that was almost
  scientific

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Two washer women by Degas
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Il quarto stato, Pellizza da Valpredo (1901)
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Käthe Kollwitz - Farmers' war

• Much of the art of modern social protest traces
  its roots to the work of German artist Käthe
  Kollwitz.
• One of a cycle of prints and drawings which the
  youthful Kollwitz produced on the theme of
  peasant revolt
• The cycle hearkened back to the Bauernkrieg
  (literally, "farmers' war") of the sixteenth
  century while portraying the dire straits of
  agricultural laborers in contemporary Germany.

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Käthe Kollwitz Ploughers, etching and aquatint,
1906

• The Plougher of her Peasant War series symbolises
  the oppressed of every age. Not the man behind
  the plough, but reduced to pulling it himself, he
  is a virtual beast of burden

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Kathe Kollwitz (German, 1867 - 1945)Brot!
(Bread!)1933
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Arbeitslosigkeit, 1909, (Unemployment )
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Hunger, 1925
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Käthe KollwitzHunger 1925
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Mother Holding Child in Her Arms, Second Version
1910
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Kathe Kollwitz, Poverty, 1893-94
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Käthe Kollwitz (German, 1867-1945), Tod in
Wasser / Death in the water

• this lithograph, produced shortly after Hitler
  assumed power, shows a drowned family, perhaps a
  prophetic vision of Germany's future as a country
  about to be drowning in death

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Kathe Kollwitz (1867-1945), Woman with her Dead
Child (1903)
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Käthe KollwitzDeath Seizes the Children 1934
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KATHE KOLLWITZ 1867 - 1945Woman in the Lap of
Death (Tod mit Frau im Schoss)Woodcut on ivory
wove paper, 1921
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Rosa Luxemburg

• Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were among the
  founders of the Berlin Spartakusbund (Spartacus
  League)
• On January 15, 1919, Liebknecht and Luxemburg
  were shot to death during the Spartacus Revolt on
  the pretext that they were attempting escape.
• In this instance Kollwitz emphasizes grief and
  the human element over any explicit political
  reference

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lmost whetted by Käthe Kollwitz

• No wonder the resentment of Kollwitz's peasant
  woman is also sharpened as she whets her
  scythe-in an etching significantly titled Almost
  whetted

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Käthe Kollwitz (German, 1867-1945)Weberzug
March of the Weavers, fourth plate in Ein
Weberaustand Revolt of the Weavers, 1897
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Käthe Kollwitz Revolt, THE PEASANT WAR 1899-1908
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Käthe Kollwitz, Outbreak, 1903
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Kathe Kollwitz, Killed in Action (1921)
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Kathe Kollwitz, Widows and Orphans (1919)
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The parents
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Mothers
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After the Battle by Kathe Kollwitz.
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The Survivors, a drawing by the German artist
Kathe Kollwitz, was used for a peace congress in
The Hague, Holland, in 1922.

• The survivors say War to War!
• The text on the right side says Do not teach the
  children to glorify the war and war hero's teach
  them to despise war