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uncertain and unformed thoughts and feelings, and gives them form. In saying
“nothing”, as she states, Salcedo is revealing.
Artists and artworks involving an examination of trauma and the expression of loss and
sorrow, which also reflect the concerns and experiences of project participants, are
therefore crucial to this thesis. Kathe Kollwitz’s body of work responds to suffering,
particularly of working class women. In observing and bringing attention to the
experience of poverty, death and social injustice, she responds to the effects of trauma
on the vulnerable and innocent. Her deep engagement with her subject is
demonstrated in her lifelong and diligent commitment to it, as well as by the immense
struggles she confronted and overcame to coherently and accurately express herself.
The recurrent use of her own image puts her in continuous dialogue with the subject,
the work and the audience (Kearns). One example of her work, the two statues
Grieving Parents, 9 which are modelled on the artist and her husband in grief at the
death of their son, are a “profound statement of individual grief for a collective
catastrophe”, writes historian Jay Winter (Winter and Sivan 58). With the complex
emotions distilled into these works expressing her own devastating loss, Kollwitz
communicates the pain and isolation of mourning, its debilitating effects and seeming
endlessness.
In the work To the Perfect Wife of Albert, 10 sculptor Antonio Canova interprets and
articulates the devastation, horror and despair of another who is confronting life in the
face of immense loss. In the honouring of the dead the artist honours the living by
acknowledging their pain and offering them the means to lighten their darkness.
Otto Dix’s art reflects his lived experience as an active participant in the First World
War. Here he brings into the public realm his feeling “that one side of reality [that]
hadn’t been portrayed, ugliness” (Karcher 46). The suite of prints, Der Krieg,
graphically depicts his reality of the Western Front, while other works are an
examination of sadistic sex and prostitution, as well as maimed and disfigured returned
9
Grieving Parents in Vladslo German Military Cemetery, near Ypres Belgium, viewed
2002 and 2008.
10
Vienna. Uxori optimae Albertus (To the Perfect Wife of Albert) Tomb of the
Archduchess Christina, daughter of Maria Theresa, in the Church of the Augustines.
Created by Canova, viewed 2008.
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