Program
Kӓthe Kollwitz (1867‒1945) was a German printmaker and sculptor associated with the expressionist movement. She was the first woman admitted as a member of the Prussian Royal Academy of Arts and the most important German printmaker of the 20th century. A socialist, feminist (she founded the Association of Women Artists in Berlin in 1913) and pacifist. She made war, hatred, poverty, love, sadness, death and struggle the main themes of her mature work.
As part of the series, we plan to present the profiles of great Polish and foreign women painters and bring their achievements closer to a wider audience. Women in art are still not given enough prominence, and indeed are often erased from it. Little has changed since the founding of the British Royal Academy in 1768, which did include two female painters, Angelika Kauffman and Mary Moser, but neither one of them is in the collective portrait of the members of the Royal Academy by Johann Zoffany alongside the other founding members. Their images are found in portraits hanging on the wall behind the models' podium, but this makes them objects of art rather than its creators. Further women were not admitted to the Academy until 1922. The exclusion to which female artists have been subjected for centuries has caused art to be perceived from a male perspective. In this mini-series, we want to restore the importance and rightful place of talented women who are still little known and unrecognised due to social prejudices.
