This fine etching entitled Sturm (Riot), depicts the Revolt of the Weavers. It bears a Von der Becke blindstamp at lower right.. Kaethe Kollwitz was born in Koenigsberg, East Prussia to a cultivated, middle class family. In 1885, she became engaged to a medical student, Karl Kollwitz, who was also a member of the Social Democratic Party. She first studied etching in 1889-90 in Munich, the artistic center of 19th century Germany. She pursued an art aimed at voicing the suffering of the people. Over the next fifty years, her husband's practice exposed her to an even wider range of suffering and tragedy. The artist was well-known by the time she was thirty. Her final years were not happy, however, for her life was completely disrupted by the fascism sweeping Germany in the late 1930s. After the Gestapo threatened her with arrest, she wore a vial of poison around her neck. She was forbidden to teach and her works, placed on a list of degenerate art, were banned from exhibition. Her son Peter died in Flanders during World War I; she was struck to the bone and used the occasion for one of her most moving protests against war. During World War II she was evacuated to Moritzburg, near Dresden. In 1943 a bomb fell on her home in Berlin, destroying early paintings, prints and plates. In April 1945, only a few days before the Armistice, Kollwitz died. She was seventy-eight. Overall size: 16 1/2 x 19 1/2 in Sight size: 9 1/4 x 12 1/2 in