Wilhelm Lehmbruck

Wilhelm Lehmbruck , 1881-1919, German sculptor. He studied at Düsseldorf and went to Paris in 1910. Influenced at first by Rodin, Brancusi, and Maillol, he later arrived at his own highly individual style. His large, elongated figures express a dramatic poignancy. Woman Kneeling (Mus. of Modern Art, New York City) is generally regarded as his best work. Lehmbruck committed suicide in Berlin at the age of 38.

Bibliography: See study by W. Hofmann (1958).

Lehmbruck, Wilhelm (b Meiderich, nr. Duisburg, 4 Jan. 1881; d Berlin, 25 Mar. 1919). German sculptor. His early work was in a fairly conservative academic manner, but when he was living in Paris from 1910 to 1914 he developed a much more personal style, influenced by the formal simplifications of Archipenko, Brancusi, and Modigliani, although still essentially in the tradition of Rodin and Maillol. It is exemplified in the extremely attenuated forms, angular pose, and melancholic expression of his Kneeling Woman (1911, MoMA, New York). On the outbreak of the First World War he returned to Germany and worked in a hospital, the suffering he witnessed being reflected in the poignancy of his last works. The war brought him to a state of acute depression and he committed suicide in 1919. Lehmbruck often used marble, but he was by temperament a modeller rather than a carver, working in clay over a spindly armature, and several of his works were cast in artificial stone to preserve the texture of the clay. With Barlach he ranks as the outstanding German Expressionist sculptor. Lehmbruck also made etchings and lithographs, painted, and wrote poetry. There is a museum dedicated to him in Duisburg.