Raw, unprettified and decried in conservative circles as “gutter art�: Käthe Kollwitz employed her art uncompromisingly as a political voice for the social and human misery of her time. Her focus always lay on the dignity of humankind. The volume provides a wide-ranging insight into the commitment and creative work of the artist, whose achievements are more topical than ever. The book covers the entire spectrum of Kollwitz’ creative work with the world-famous cycles of graphic works A Weavers’ Revolt and Peasants’ War, rare proofs and moving drawings and sculptures, thereby showing all facets of her masterful skills. The political dimension of Kollwitz’ art becomes tangible in a particularly impressive manner through her posters. The unbroken validity of her work is demonstrated in a juxtaposition with the interventions by the artist Mona Hatoum (b. 1952), which revolve around topics such as vulnerability, persecution and the experience of conflict.

In less than two decades, Jacoba van Heemskerck (1876-1923) created a powerful oeuvre comprising paintings, woodcuts, glass works and mosaics. Her expressive subjects, including landscapes, townscapes and harbour scenes, are characterised by luminosity and increasing transparency, by rhythmical compositions of the pictorial space, black contours and an intensive use of colour. After her artistic beginnings in the circle around Mondrian and elsewhere, Jacoba van Heemskerck belonged to the centre of the avant-garde movement emanating from the "Sturm" of Herwarth Walden in Berlin - the gallerist and publisher who made artists like Marc, Kandinsky and Jawlensky famous. Her work is shaped by her orientation towards Anthroposophy, which bears witness to her interest in the elemental effect of light and colour on the viewer. Her creative work is highly topical today thanks to her understanding of nature and the cosmos as a world viewed as a whole.