The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (255 page)

Kollwitz , Käthe
(née Schmidt
,

1867–1945).
German graphic artist and sculptor. She came from a family of strong moral and social convictions, and after marrying a doctor, Karl Kollwitz , in 1891 she lived in the poorer quarters of northern Berlin, where she gained first-hand acquaintance of the wretched conditions in which the urban poor lived. The two series of etchings that established her reputation were inspired by a spirit of social protest against the working conditions of the day:
Weavers' Revolt
(1897–8) and
Peasants' War
(1902–8). After about 1911 she turned from etching to lithography, and after the First World War she turned from representing particular subjects to depicting abstract concepts and great timeless themes such as the Mother and Child. Her work is uncompromisingly serious and often deeply pessimistic in spirit and many of her later drawings and prints were pacifist in intention (her son was killed in the First World World War and her grandson in the Second World War, and her best-known sculpture is the war memorial at Dixmuiden, Flanders, completed in 1932). In line with her left-wing views she visited the Soviet Union in 1927, but was subsequently disillusioned with Soviet Communism. In 1919 she had been made the first woman member of the Prussian Academy in Berlin, but in 1933 she was expelled and suffered harassment from the Nazis, although her work was never declared
degenerate
and the Nazis sometimes used her images—without her authorization—in their propaganda. Soon after this (1934–5) she made a moving series of eight lithographs on the theme of Death. In its elimination of the accidental, its instinctive grasp of the tragic essential, and its poignant concern for human suffering, her work represents one of the highpoints of German
Expressionism
and of 20th-cent. graphic art. Only rarely does she lapse into sentimentality. ‘I should like’, she wrote in 1922, ‘to exert influences in these times when human beings are so perplexed and in need of help.’

 
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(1619–88).
Dutch painter, the best-known member of a family of artists. He studied with his brother
Jacob
(1614/15–after 1690) in Rotterdam, and
Houbraken
says he was also a pupil of
Rembrandt
in Amsterdam, where he settled in 1641. Although he painted various subjects (the poet Vondel praised his portraits and history pictures) his fame now rests on his landscapes. He specialized in extensive views, and his work has a majesty and power that rivals the similar scenes of
Ruisdael
; the National Gallery in London has four outstanding examples. Like many Dutch painters he had a second occupation; he ran a prosperous shipping firm and evidently painted little in the last decade of his life. His wealth enabled him to collect drawings. He was a prolific draughtsman himself and his sketchy penmanship can be deceptively close to Rembrandt's.
Salomon Koninck
(1609–56), the cousin of Philips and Jacob, was also a painter. He was a follower of Rembrandt, imitating him in pictures of hermits, old men, and philosophers in their studies, as well as in religious scenes, and exaggerating the master's early predilection for rich exotic costumes, emphatic gestures, and dramatic contrasts of light and shadow. His work is fairly rare; there are examples in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and the Mauritshuis, The Hague.

 
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Koons , Jeff
.

See
NEO-GEO
.

 
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kore
.

Greek word for ‘maiden’, applied to the draped standing female statues characteristic of the
Archaic
period. The plural is
korai
.

 
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(1926– ).
British painter, born of Russian-Jewish immigrant parents in the East End of London, an area that has provided the chief subject-matter of his paintings. His training included evening classes under David
Bomberg
, 1950–2, and his work has close affinities with that of another Bomberg student, Frank
Auerbach
— in choice of subject, emotional treatment of it, and use of extremely heavy
impasto
. Kossoff generally retains a firmer sense of structure than Auerbach, however, often using thick black outlines, and unlike him does not approach abstraction. See also
SCHOOL OF LONDON
.

 
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