Peter Kathe Research Paper

Kathe was a German artist. She lived from July 8th 1867 to April 22nd 1945 during the Expressionism period. Her artwork depicted many emotions and could be considered dark and constructed, as she drew with poverty, hunger and the working class people as her inspiration and her experiences with WW I and II. She was mainly known for her etching style of her art, but worked with many other types such as painting, sculpting, and woodcuts. Kathe was also the first woman to be elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts

Born as Kathe Schmidt, Kathe was the fifth child in her family. When she was 12, Kate's father put her into art lessons after realizing her talent, where she would draw and copy plaster casts. At 16 she started drawing working men and

In 1891, Kathe married Karl who was then a doctor. Kathe then moved with Karl in their first Large apartment in a working class area in Berlin, where Karl would tend to poor men, and peasants. Seeing the poor men everyday contributed to Kathe’s detailed expressionism. In 1896, Kathe had her second son, Peter. Then through 1898-1903 Kathe taught at the Berlin School of Women Artist. In 1914, Peter was killed in a battle of WW I. The death of her son strengthened her passions for social justice and a pacifist mindset. Kathe believed all art should reflect on the hard times and conditions of the 1920’s. She then continued making works that focused on the themes of war and poverty and death. In 1932 Kathe was introduced to sculpting and made a war memorial to her son, Peter. It was featured in a military cemetery in Flanders, where her son was killed. She then later became the first woman to be in the Prussian Academy of Arts, but in 1933, when Hitler came to power, she was banned by the Nazis from attending, her artwork was then removed from galleries for the “degenerate”