Jacobi, Lotte (1896-1990) Portrait of Käthe Kollwitz.
1931.
Gelatin silver print, signed by Lotte in pencil on lower right of image; 14 x 10 7/8 in.
The first woman elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts, Käthe Kollwitz, German printer, painter, and sculptor whose early realist works developed into expressionism. Her most famous pieces address issues of poverty, hunger, and war in the working class, often capturing solemn figures with scratchy, intricate linework. This portrait by Jacobi was taken just before Kollwitz was forced out of the Academy of Arts by the Nazi regime. Her demonstrated support for the Dringender Appell (the Urgent Call for Unity) made her an unpopular figure with the Nazis. Her work was subsequently removed from museums and institutions, excepting her Mother and Child, which was used by the party for propaganda.
Lotte Jacobi was a Polish-born portrait photographer and photojournalist known for her dramatic black-and-white images of ordinary subjects and influential artists and thinkers. Albert Einstein, Franz Kafka, Marc Chagall and J.D. Salinger all sat for her. Her portrait of Salinger made famous by the rear panel of the dust jacket of The Catcher in the Rye when it was first published.
