Lament by Kathe Kollwitz

Kathe Kollwitz, Lament, c. 1938, Bronze Relief, Kathe Kollwitz Museum Koln, Cologne

In honor of Women’s History Month I am paying tribute to two very strong twentieth-century female artists, Kathe Kollwitz and Dorothea Lange. Both artists depicted poignantly the human suffering of the two most horrific periods in the twentieth century—the American Depression and World War II. Here’s an excerpt from my book on Kathe Kollwitz’ iconic bronze sculpture, Lament…

“It is my duty to voice the suffering of men, the never-ending sufferings heaped mountain-high.” — Käthe Kollwitz

A single glance at this powerful sculpture is enough to immediately feel the grief and deep anguish captured in this poignant piece appropriately named Lament. Created by German artist Käthe Kollwitz, the bronze relief depicts the double nature of compassionate grief, presenting it as a strong emotional reaction that begins deep within the soul and emerges to the surface to ask, quite simply, why?

Grief triggered by compassion happens when we identify with human beings who are suffering. Some become thick-skinned and indifferent to avoid these tormenting feelings, but for those who refuse to for-get that so many people are going through deprivations, violent death, and daily suffering, lamenting this painful reality becomes the deep-seated reaction when the soul and mind come together to mourn. This is the moment that Kollwitz captures in Lament.

A self-portrait, this sculpture embodies the suffering the artist witnessed and felt personally, time and time again. She was no stranger to grief. She experienced loss early in life upon the death of siblings. As a growing artist she was witness to the struggle and despair felt by mistreated workers, including weavers and peasants, whose battles for basic rights seemed to always end in defeat. When her son died fighting in World War I, she experienced prolonged intense grief and severe depression. Many years later, she lost a grandson in World War II. No wonder death and grieving took such prominent places in her artwork.

In Lament, we see the artist immersed in an unfathomable degree of suffering. With eyes closed, lips pressed tightly, one hand covering half her face and the other appearing to suppress the cries that want to scream out, Kollwitz presents an internalization of the injustices she saw and experienced throughout her life. She seems to shut herself down into eternal lament, sealing in every mother’s pain at losing a child, every person’s grief at having to say goodbye too soon to a loved one, every human’s sense of being crushed by injustice. The pain is too much to bear.

A masterful painter, printmaker, and sculptor, Kollwitz created incomparably moving images of mothers grieving for their dead children. Deeply mournful, these heartbreaking pieces communicated the extraordi-nary compassion of her own response to the personal tragedies she experienced.

Lament is a tribute to her friend and fellow artist, Ernst Barlach, who was prohibited from working as a sculptor, and whose membership in the art academies was canceled due to the growing, unchecked power of the Nazi regime. Barlach died in grief and despair. In this bronze self-portrait Kollwitz purposely ex-aggerated the hands, making them large and heavy to express the sorrow she felt witnessing Germany fall into the hands of Hitler.

Unapologetically honest in its depiction of raw grief and a sense of defeat in the face of multiple tragedies, Lament speaks to the dark night of the soul we feel when loss becomes too heavy to bear. It is a powerful protest piece against injustice and a strong petition for humanity and peace.

Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, 1936, Photograph, Harry Ransom Center.

In honor of Women’s History Month I am paying tribute to two very strong twentieth-century female artists, Kathe Kollwitz and Dorothea Lange. Both artists depicted poignantly the human suffering of the two most horrific periods in the twentieth century—the American Depression and World War II. Here’s an excerpt from my book on Dorothea Lange’s iconic photograph titled Migrant Mother…

The image is visceral. Painful. Heart-wrenching. Who is this woman, and what is she going through? What about her children? What became of this family?

This emotionally charged Depression-era moment was captured by documentary photographer Dorothea Lange, whose images skillfully portrayed difficult chapters in America’s history. New Jersey-born Lange worked for the Farm Security Administration to document the reality of life for people intimately affected by economic struggle, lack of jobs, home displacement, and loss of hope during the Great Depression of the 1930s. She also covered the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans in the 1940s for the War Relocation Au-thority. Her haunting images show the human toll of world event consequences, particularly the displacement of millions of people.

Migrant Mother has become an iconic representation of the uncertainty families experienced as they drifted across America in search of work, food, and some semblance of stability. Displaced, bankrupt farm families and migrant workers faced grueling conditions daily as they looked for agricultural work and whatever odd jobs they could find. Through the medium of photography Lange was able to bring public attention to the plight of the struggling poor.

The woman pictured in Migrant Mother was Florence Owens Thompson. Her face expresses the deep concern of a parent grappling with what steps to take next to provide for her children. No stranger to hard work, Thompson was a remarried widow who supported her children by working in fields and restaurants. As a migrant farm worker, she was accustomed to the challenges of following crops and picking everything from beets to cotton, often from daybreak until well past sunset.

The picture was taken at a pea-pickers camp north of Los Angeles. When Lange recalled this photo many years later, she explained, “I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, as well as birds that the children killed.”

That day Lange captured what has become the most recognizable image from the Depression. How did the lives of the photographer and the subject unfold afterwards?

Dorothea Lange went on to become the first woman to receive a Guggenheim fellowship, which she used to document the experience of Japanese Americans forcibly detained during WWII. She co-launched a nonprofit foundation to advance photography, and she worked for Life magazine. A childhood polio survivor, Lange died at the age of 70.

Florence Owens Thompson, who was of Cherokee descent, continued to support her children by harvesting fields and getting jobs in bars, restaurants, and hospitals. The family eventually settled in Modesto, California, with Thompson continuing to work in the fields into her early fifties, often negotiating wages for her fellow workers. She died at the age of 80, and her children fondly remember her as the backbone of the family.

Lange’s and Thompson’s time together was brief but pivotal, reminding us that our interactions with others matter, regardless of how fleeting each encounter may be.