Studies for Kollwitz Homage

Studies for Kollwitz Homage

Where do all the women who have watched so carefully over their loved ones get the heroism to send them to face the cannon? I toy with the thought (of) . . . mothers standing in a circle defending their children, as a sculpture in the round. --Kollwitz

____________________

Kollwitz believed that art should reflect social conditions in one's time. The Nazis forbade her work to be displayed, and banished her work to the cellar of the Crown Prince Palace, declaring "In the Third Reich mothers have no need to defend their children. The State does that." Kollwitz Museum, Berlin

__________________________________

I have been working on studies for the "Kollwitz Homage", which is being planned as a stained glass assemblage. These studies of mothers and children will have an underlaying of photo transfer collage beneath the figurative work. The figurative work as in the studies will be painted on glass with vitreous paint.

The photo transfers are images of mothers, children, families of hunger and poverty prior to and during World War II, and images from the Holocaust.

These first studies are from Kollwitz' work, "Widows and Orphans". I will also reference and create studies from her work, "The Survivors".

My cartoon for the piece can also be seen in this album which shows the contour lines for the glass shapes of the composition. The photograph of this pencil cartoon is light, and more information can be seen in the detail shots of the composition.