German Expressionism and Kathe Kolwitz

German expressionism was a movement started in the early 20th century, and put an emphasis on inner feelings. A lot of art from this movement was made up of simplified shapes, bright and strange colours or ,in contrast, dark and limited colours. The style looks quite surreal and sometimes uncanny. Often art in the movement was painted (like Franz Marc's) or was a woodcut print (like some of Kathe Kollwitz').

I like the strange and exaggerated features of a lot of these, I find it to be a unique and interesting style. I also love the two tone prints, and how the lines look to emulate shading and depth. Very fittingly these two tone prints are quite somber and dark in mood, I feel the artstyle complements that really well. This movement fits my theme well. The dark and moody style of some of these fit how I'd like to express the feelings of being in lockdown - that being ones like confinement or loneliness.

Kathe Kollwitz is a notable figure in German Expressionism, and her work ties very well into the theme. Her work is this on the darker side of the movement, often being a woodcut print with black ink or drawn with charcoal. The people shown in her art are brooding and depressive, often their faces are covered in darkness which adds to this. I've mostly looked at her work to get a grasp of the darker emotions and the style in which she prints.

I made screen prints emulating the style I've looked at. Because I was using paper it was more limiting in terms of how I could cut my lines, as everything had to stay together. For example I had to leave gaps at the neck, because if I didn't the paper would separate and it would be much more difficult to print. This lead to it being hard to make a more complex design. I made a video showing my progress of cutting out the stencil and then screen printing,shown below.

I then moved onto lino printing. On the left is my initial drawing and plan to cut into the lino, and the right is the lino I used to print.

The bottom sheet of paper is my second attempt. I realised I forgot to cut out a part of the hand, and along with that I cut into the face a bit more so there was less going on in the face. I think one of the hardest things about making this was how I made the lines separating the body parts. I had to be really careful not to mess up cutting where the hand is because I didn't want it blending with the face. It was a really long process and I didn't realise where I hadn't cut until it was too late.

 

(I forgot to remove the audio which made the background noise sped up and distorted, so you might want to mute it)

 I moved on to a second print based on the picture on the left. This one is more focused on the shapes on my face and I think is more similar to Kollwitz's prints than the other lino print.