MoMA, Neue Galerie Jointly Acquire Self Portrait by Käthe Kollwitz – RisePEI

The Museum of Trendy Artwork in New York and the Neue Galerie, an establishment devoted to German and Austrian artwork additionally in New York, have collectively acquired a uncommon self-portrait by the Twentieth-century German printmaker Käthe Kollwitz.

The lithograph, Self Portrait en face (1904), depicts the artist at 37-years-old. Her face is rendered in various impartial tones,. The museums had been capable of buy the piece by funds from a number of donors, together with ARTnews High 200 Collectors Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder, a longtime MoMA trustee and cofounder of Neue Galerie.

Kollwitz, who was born in 1867 within the Prussian metropolis of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia), is broadly identified for her subject material that targeted on the inside lives of girls. Lively within the late nineteenth century by to the early Twentieth century, she gained prominence amongst her male counterparts that ran in German Expressionist circles. All through her work she targeted on depicting themes associated to mourning, poverty, battle, and the working class.

The current work will be a part of 34 different prints by the artist in MoMA’s assortment. Self-portrait en face is likely one of the few works that Kollwitz created in colour; after 1905, she transitioned to a colorless palette, primarily working in black and white.

The information comes as museums world wide transfer to fill historic gaps of their everlasting collections, primarily by buying work by girls and artists of colour, whose contributions to artwork historical past have lengthy been missed and underrepresented in institutional collections .

The Museum of Trendy Artwork plans to carry a significant exhibition devoted to the Kollwitz’s work within the close to future, a press release from the museum confirmed. A big-scale exhibition targeted artist opened on the Getty Museum in Los Angeles in 2019.

Christophe Cherix, the chief curator of MoMA’s drawings and prints division, described the print as “a monument within the historical past of printmaking and a piece that speaks as a lot to its time as ours,” including, “Käthe Kollwitz’s legacy looms giant over the Twentieth and twenty first centuries.”