A political language in printmaking: Käthe Kollwitz

German artist Käthe Kollwitz, during her lifetime she produced numerous pieces which would also act as historical documents on issues that deeply affect the society, such as poverty, desperation, illness, and death, experienced by the people, especially the working class. She created a political language over the concepts of motherhood and femininity and made this language the building block of her artistic identity. In the first section, the changes in Germany (in the era in which Käthe Kollwitz lived) and the changes in the concepts of art and artists in this period, the effects of these changes and contexts of social relations are examined, and how these contexts affect the public emotionally is discussed through the works that are the subject of the thesis. In the second section, how Käthe Kollwitz handles the bodily postures and movements of the figures in her print paintings, as well as the emotional states they experience in the context of technique and subject, was also examined, and at the same time, a research was conducted on the art language which Käthe Kollwitz created through her preferred printing techniques. In the third section, the posters that Käthe Kollwitz made using the printing technique, the self-portrait works that she made using the very same printing technique, and the printing series, which are considered to be important building blocks of the history of art, were examined and these works, which also act as historical documents, were presented as case studies and a conclusion was made.