As part of a new art project highlighting the dearth of public monuments to real women – as opposed to idealised, allegorical figures – the artist Liane Lang recently visited Kollwitzplatz in Berlin, site of Gustav Seitz’s bronze memorial to Käthe Kollwitz. She arrived to find some children playing around the statue and was shocked to discover, when they asked who the woman was, that their father had no idea.

If Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945) is no longer well known in her native Germany, she is even less familiar to British audiences, something that the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham hopes to put right with “Portrait of the Artist: Käthe Kollwitz” (until 26 November).