Käthe Kollwitz: Das Opfer (The Sacrifice), 1922/23. Plate 1 of the series "Krieg" (War). Woodcut on wove paper with wide margins, 37.1 x 40.2 cm (block); 55 x 74.8 cm (sheet). Signed in pencil by the artist (lower right), numbered ‘B 18/100’ (lower left). Reference: Knesebeck 179/IX/c; Klipstein 177/VII/c
In a letter to Erna Krüger from late December 1922, the artist writes that no one could ever guess that ‘these (7) medium-sized woodblocks’ took many years to make. In fact, the woodblocks for this series are among the larger ones the artist used, and a glance at the catalogue raisonné, where the numerous variants and trial proofs for the war series are listed, shows how much effort the artist put into finding the final form. Incidentally, the titles of the individual subjects of these woodblocks, which are perhaps the most impressive in Käthe Kollwitz's work, ‘The Victim’, ‘The Volunteers’, ‘The Parents’, ‘The Widow I and II’, ‘The Mothers’, ‘The People’ say almost everything about the artist's deep and harrowing confrontation with the war experiences of 1914-1918 (during which one of her sons fell).
