Head in hand, Käthe Kollwitz leans towards you out of the darkness. Her face is so superbly drawn you sense the nerve and bone beneath the life-worn surface. There are the deep-set eyes and snub nose familiar from more than 100 self-portraits, but this one presses so close to the viewer it is as if Kollwitz has passed directly through the picture plane and is breathing the very same air – an image the size of life, and fully as profound.
Kollwitz (1867-1945) is the most famous of the four artists brought together in Making Modernism at the Royal Academy. Yet even she – for all her graphic genius, working entirely in drawing and democratic print, cheaper to buy, easier to transport than any painting – is somewhat stinted in the world’s museums.
