I will be taking part in the Symposium Illustrating Conflict, an event organised by the History of the Printed Image Network (HOPIN) at the Centre for Printing History and Culture, Birmingham City University, and run in conjunction with ArtsFest at the University of Wolverhampton.

This talk explores the graphic work of Käthe Kollwitz and associated artists in the context of the German, and later, international No More War movement in the post-World War I years, where it was deployed in popular print media, both in Germany and internationally, as antimilitarist activism. If Kollwitz remains among the best known of German pacifist artists directly involved with the No More War movement, she was joined by some of her contemporaries, such as Georg Kretzschmar and Frans Masereel, in deploying her graphic work in support of antiwar activism. These artists were connected to some of the leading antiwar voices of the time, including French Nobel Prize-winning writer Romain Rolland, Ernst Friedrich, the author of Krieg dem Kriege! [War against War!] and the founder of War Resisters’ International, Helene Stöcker. This talk looks at how these artists engaged their work in the production of posters, periodicals, and multilingual publications, as well as the production of inexpensive editions of their prints, to reach beyond the confines of gallery walls in their support of the movement.