1902, Käthe Kollwitz, Ploughmen and Woman (rejected second version) -- Getty Museum (Los Angeles)
From the exhibition label: Kollwitz devoted five years to The Ploughmen, the first of seven prints in Peasants’ War. The preparatory drawings, working proofs, and rejected versions record the artist’s evolving thoughts as she sought to articulate the inhumane conditions that compelled the laborers to revolt. Through numerous trials in different printmaking processes, the artist recast the figures to revise the composition’s narrative implications. In an early rejected lithograph, a hunched peasant woman guides a plough pulled by two human beasts of burden. Unhappy with this composition, Kollwitz repositioned the ploughers and introduced a standing female figure in the foreground in a study drawing and etching. The artist rejected this image, too, ultimately eliminating the female figure to focus on the laborers’ physical torment. The definitive version of The Ploughmen, executed in etching, captures the men in their Sisyphean misery, perpetually mired in their desperate place in society.
1902, Käthe Kollwitz, Ploughmen and Woman (rejected second version) -- Getty Museum (Los Angeles)
From the exhibition label: Kollwitz devoted five years to The Ploughmen, the first of seven prints in Peasants’ War. The preparatory drawings, working proofs, and rejected versions record the artist’s evolving thoughts as she sought to articulate the inhumane conditions that compelled the laborers to revolt. Through numerous trials in different printmaking processes, the artist recast the figures to revise the composition’s narrative implications. In an early rejected lithograph, a hunched peasant woman guides a plough pulled by two human beasts of burden. Unhappy with this composition, Kollwitz repositioned the ploughers and introduced a standing female figure in the foreground in a study drawing and etching. The artist rejected this image, too, ultimately eliminating the female figure to focus on the laborers’ physical torment. The definitive version of The Ploughmen, executed in etching, captures the men in their Sisyphean misery, perpetually mired in their desperate place in society.