Few artists are as universally beloved as the German printmaker, draftsman, and sculptor Kathe Kollwitz, whose powerful images of mothers and children and of protest against social injustice have long been admired by both critics and the public. Kollwitz, a woman in a field dominated by men, steadfastly adhered to a figurative style in the era of abstraction and depicted socially engaged subject matter when it was unfashionable. Kollwitz is largely...

Expressing the anxieties of the late nineteenth century and the uncertainties of the modern world, Edvard Munch (1862-1944) often depicted in his works dangerously seductive fin de siecle women, sickly figures, and isolated characters in barren landscapes. These powerful, haunting paintings are widely recognized and revered, especially his iconic work The Scream (1893). Yet few admirers of Munch's early works realize that the artist lived well into...