134. Memorial Sheet for Karl Liebknecht. Kathe Kollwitz. 1919-1920 CE Woodcut.

• Form
  • Stark black and white of the woodcut used to magnify the grief
  • Human grief dominates
• Patronage
  • Family of Liebknecht asked Kollwitz to memorialize him
• Technique
  • Wood-block print
  • Kollwitz used this technique to reinforce the emotions depicted in the scene
  • She liked the primitive quality that wood-block prints could render
• Context
  • Liebknecht was among the founders of the Berlin Spartacus League, which became the German Communist Party
  • In 1919, Liebknecht was shot to death during a Communist uprising in Berlin called the Spartacus revolt
  • Liebknecht was held to be a martyr in the Communist cause
  • There are no political references in the woodcut
  • Themes of war and poverty dominate the artist's oeuvre
  • She often emphasized the theme of women grieving over dead children; her son died in WWI; the artist then became a socialist.