Selbstbildnis (self-portrait)

 

Kathe Kollwitz

  1867 - 1945 (biography)

1912  

etching and transfer, printed in a dark brown ink 

5 7/16 x 3 15/16" platemark 

pencil, lower right 

unnumbered from early, deluxe edition 

signed in lower left by Felsing; collector mark verso 

Knesebeck 126; Klipstein 122 

smooth ivory wove japan 

Knesebeck VIIa 

Emil Richter 

ANFO113 

SOLD

One of a number of self portraits Kollwitz did using the etching medium. This etching-transfer was done in 1912. This impression from the final (seventh) state, the first of 5 printings in this state and is pencil signed by the artist and the printer, Otto Felsing. It is printed on an ivory japan paper in a brown/black ink and is in excellent condition. There is an unidentified collector's stamp on the verso, in blue ink. Kollwitz often used a combination of transfer and etching, transferring an existing drawing to the copper plate using a soft ground and then adding etched lines to the image, as is the case with this print. The laid lines of the transfer paper are visible as a “texture”. From Knesebeck catalogue: "Proofs, some signed, before the edition in Sievers' catalogue, in brown, on velin and Japan, some with Felsing's signature." Most of Kollwitz's etchings, from as early as 1891 until the 1960s, were printed at the Otto Felsing Printery, many of them by Schulz.