For My Mother (Translation)
Fur meine Mutter (Primary Title)
Conrad Felixmüller, German, 1897 - 1977 (Artist)
Felixmüller served for a month as a medical orderly in World War I, an experience that made a deep impression on him. This image, made during the war, depicts a wounded figure in the foreground, with his bandaged arm in a sling, and two other figures in the background, one caring for another. In a text he published at the time, Felixmüller described the horrific scene in the hospital of “flesh, body, bones” and wrote “kindness, sympathy and feeling restore health.” The title of the woodcut perhaps suggests that he wanted to provide his mother with a visual description of what he witnessed or offer a nurturing scene to honor her own caring example.
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