The University of Cincinnati Art Collection houses prints by two early 20th century German Expressionist printmakers, Max Pechstein (1881-1955) and Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945). Pechstein’s Das Vater Unser (The Lord’s Prayer) series (1921) originally a portfolio of twelve, is represented in the University of Cincinnati Art Collection with nine of the bold woodcut prints. Kollwitz’s small postcard lithographs, Two Chatting Women with Two Children (c. 1930) and The Hospital Visit (c. 1926), are intimate and show the artists soft touch. Though formally very different, these prints share a common subject, the suffering of Germans during the interwar period (1918-1939). Both artists personally experienced both World Wars and their tragedies, and while Pechstein rarely addressed it directly, Kollwitz’s career was full of her antiwar sentiments. The prints grapple with the grief, political turmoil, and financial difficulties associated with the interwar period and each artist turns to their own form of religion to exercise their pain.
Belinda Reynolds (music), Ting Luo (piano and poetry), Charles Woodman (images)
WORDS is a multimedia piano work with spoken words and visuals. The vocal part consists of an aural collage of Miss Luo, reciting in Mandarin and English, a poem written by herself, about the story of her grandfather, a composer during the late 20th century in China. The interplay between the audio collage, the video, and the piano part, create a multimedia composition that immerses the audience in a blanket of enticing, reflective sound-visual experiences.
