The eyes of Käthe Kollwitz, black and hopeless, look at you like messengers of death from a lithograph the German artist made of herself in 1934. You don’t need much knowledge of modern history to guess why the socialist Kollwitz was in despair, a year after Hitler became chancellor of Germany. But is she really “making modernism”, as the title of this exhibition claims, in this confession of private anguish and political shock? Kollwitz’s self-portrait in her 60s is as timeless as Rembrandt’s as a broken old man.
