Georgia O’Keeffe and Kathe Kollwitz

          Georgia O’Keeffe was born on November 15, 1887 and grew up in Wisconsin. She went to the Art Institute Chicago from 1905 to 1906 and studied at the Art Students League in New York from 1907 to 1908. She quit art for a while and started teaching in Texas. Some years later she took classes at the Teachers College of Columbia University in South Carolina and this sparked her interest in art again. She soon moved back to Texas and made a series of charcoal drawings that led to her discovery in the art world because of Alfred Stieglitz. She had her first exhibition in 1916. She moved to New York to spend her time on her art there but moved to New Mexico after the death of her husband, Alfred Stieglitz. She spent the rest of her life there painting the beautiful scenes that inspired her and traveling. She died in 1986 at the age of 98. Some of her works are Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue, Blue and Green Music, and Lake George (formerly known as Reflection Seascape).

Cow's Skull: Red, White,and Blue. 1931. 

Oil on canvas. Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

Blue and Green Music. 1919. Oil on canvas. 

The Art Institute of Chicago

. Lake George (formerly known as Reflection Seascape). 

1922. Oil on canvas. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, New York

            Kathe Kollwitz was born on July 8, 1867.She studied at an art school in Berlin where she studied in drawing, graphic design, etching, woodcuts, and lithography. She married Karl Kollwitz in 1891 and had two children with him. However later she lost on of her sons in War World I as well as a nephew in World War II. She was the first woman to be elected as a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts In 1933 she was forced to leave her position. Later her art was removed from German museums and she was prohibited from exhibiting. She died in 1945 in a town named Moritzburg. Three of her works are Woman with a Dead Child, The Prisoners, and March of the Weavers.

Woman with a Dead Child. 1903. National Gallery of Art,Washington D.C.

The Prisoners. 1908. Engraving, etching. British Museum, London, UK

March of the Weavers. 1897. Engraving. Stadtmuseum, Munich, Germany

            The art of these two women are both amazing and yet they themselves are so vastly different. Georgia’s life was married, she had great work that became famous, and when her husband died she moved to Mexico to paint in peace and quiet. She was part of the American Modernism movement and was also associated with Precisionism which is smooth and sharply and sharply defined painting style as well as a combination of cubism and realism. Her work is colorful, and ranges in subject matter from landscapes to nature to skyscapes. She did water coloring and oil on canvas paintings. Her work doesn’t have detail but disregards it for simplicity. The life Kathe Kollwitz seems a more tumultuous compared to Georgia’s. Kollwitz was married and had two children but she lost one to the war. She also became very famous and that might have saved her at sometimes. She and her art suffered from the lose of her home to being not being allowed to display anymore. She was part of the expressionism movement. Her work was influenced a lot by war and suffering therefore it was a lot about scenes of events in history like failed revolts and oppression. She didn't use color and her work portrayed the torturous feelings some of her subjects were feeling. These feeling were augmented with the dark values she used due to her mediums: etchings, engravings and woodcuts of which are just some of her tools.