Ottilie Ehlers-Kollwitz

Ottilie Ehlers-Kollwitz (born July 15, 1900 in Finkenkrug / Falkensee, † May 27, 1963 in Berlin ) was a German graphic artist and painter . She was the daughter-in-law of Käthe Kollwitz .

Life

From 1919 she studied at the Reimann School in Berlin and at the teaching facility of the Museum of Applied Arts under Max Hertwig , Emil Orlik and Ernst Böhm . After her marriage to Hans Kollwitz in 1920, she devoted herself in the following years to raising her four children Peter (1921–1942), the twin sisters Jordis and Jutta (* 1923) and Arne (* 1930). Nevertheless, she used her scant free time in a disciplined manner to further her artistic development. In 1923 she published “Little Peter's Book” with hand-colored woodcuts and her own verses. From 1925 she dealt with the technique of etching . Within the family, however, she was measured against the works of her mother-in-law, whose aesthetic, however, was not hers; Nevertheless, Käthe Kollwitz appreciated her work. A psychotherapy undertaken from 1928 onwards had a liberating effect , from which Ottilie Ehlers-Kollwitz emerged personally strengthened and artistically inspired.

From then on she made a name for herself primarily as a book illustrator . In addition, she perfected herself in the technique of woodcut. A large part of their work was destroyed in the Second World War. A series of woodcuts with mainly East Prussian motifs, created between 1938 and 1943, survived the war years. This corpus was published as early as 1946. The art historian Gerhard Händler wrote in the foreword: “The woodcuts by our artist have nothing of the revolutionary nature of the ' Brücke ' masters. They speak a quieter, more intimate language, but in their own way they meet all the demands of black and white art. In rich development they bring the very personal nuance of their creator, their very own graphic contribution ”. In 1946 she began working with Volk und Wissen Verlag , for which she worked as an illustrator.

In 1950, on a trip to London at the British Museum, she worked extensively on Chinese woodcuts and painting. In the years that followed, up to her death, she often stayed in Italy and on Elba for study purposes . The artistic harvest of these stays were now light-flooded watercolors, color woodcuts and color monotypes .

The reception of these works began in the mid-1950s, but was suddenly interrupted for decades by the artist's sudden death in 1963. It was not until 2010 that the work of Ottilie Ehlers-Kollwitz was made accessible to an interested public again through a comprehensive exhibition. In 2014 a detailed and richly illustrated monograph on the life and work of Ottilie Ehlers-Kollwitz was published in parallel to an exhibition entirely dedicated to her at the Käthe-Kollwitz-Museum in Cologne, entitled “Proximity and Distance”, which also lists all previous exhibitions.

The art historian Friedegund Weidemann calls her “an artist in the best Berlin tradition, who gives intense expression to the emotional experience of man and nature through masterly mastery of the artistic craft” (p. 9).

literature

• Arne Kollwitz / Friedegund Weidemann: Proximity and Distance. The graphic artist Ottilie Ehlers Kollwitz. Nicolai, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-89479-852-9
• Ottilie Ehlers Kollwitz: 13 woodcuts. With a foreword by Gerhard Händler. Art publisher Eduard Henning, Halle / Saale o. J. (1946)

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