Working Woman With Earring Analysis

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As I made my way around the Tweed Museum of Art I came across an etching done by Kathe Kollwitz. “Working Woman with Earring” caught my attention due to the black and white that emphasized the emotional use of color. I analyzed the art piece by considering the following: what I know, what I see, what I feel, the differences between that time in history and now, how the piece of art embodies the culture and values of its time and place and the relationship between the form and content. To begin learning more about the art’s meaning, I researched the artist to better identify what her art meant. Kathe Kollwitz was born in what is now known as Kaliningrad, Russia in 1867. Kathe established herself as a female artist who portrayed women and her subject’s predicaments during the time period. At the time, it may have seemed like her work wasn't current due to the increased use of abstraction, yet she continued to use light and dark contrasts to reveal emotions. After World War One, the war she loss her son to, her art was more reflective of the exploration of mourning. Kathe no longer painted and became in favor of etching and sculpture, and later lithography and woodcuts. She used the subject of mourning to show compassion for those in need, which reinforced her sense of advocacy. In 1933, The Nazi government forbid her from teaching at the …show more content…

Similar to her period of art, today abstraction is used by many artists. The main difference distinguished between today's art and Kollwitz’s period in history are the issues that are brought up as subject matter. During Kollwitz’s time World War One and World War Two were both huge events that occurred in history that inspired the work of many artists. Today, there is a more broad range of subject matters in art, some of which that acknowledge current topics such as issues on police brutality, terrorism, sexism and

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