Lehmbruck, Wilhelm

Lehmbruck, Wilhelm (vĭl`hĕlm lām`brk), 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).

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Lehmbruck, Wilhelm

(born Jan. 4, 1881, Meiderich, Ger.—died March 25, 1919, Berlin) German sculptor, painter, and printmaker. His youthful work was academically realistic, but he grew to admire the works of Auguste Rodin, and in 1910 he moved to Paris, where he produced paintings and lithographs as well as sculptures. He became one of the most important German Expressionist sculptors, best known for his elongated nudes, such as Kneeling Woman (1911), which suggests a resigned pessimism. He returned to Germany at the outbreak of World War I and tended wounded soldiers in a hospital. Seated Youth (1917) reveals his profound depression; he committed suicide two years later.

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Lehmbruck, Wilhelm 

Born Jan. 4, 1881, in Duisburg; died Mar. 25, 1919, in Berlin. German sculptor.

Lehmbruck studied at the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts between 1901 and 1907. He worked in Berlin, Paris, and Zürich. His early works reveal the influence of A. Maillol and are distinguished by pure plastic beauty and balanced structure (Standing Woman, artificial stone, 1910–11, National Gallery, Berlin). Between 1910 and 1919, having adopted expressionism, Lehmbruck, with the aid of conventional elongation, sought to impart to the figures a special spirituality (Youth Ascending, stone, 1913, Museum of Modern Art, New York). The work The Fallen (stone, 1915–16, Frau Lehmbruck Collection, Tübingen) reflects the tragedy of World War I (1914–18). Lehmbruck committed suicide.

REFERENCE

Hoff, A. Wilhelm Lehmbruck Berlin, 1961.