VIENNA.- Wilhelm Lehmbruck (1881–1919) is doubtlessly among the most eminent artists of the 20th century. The Leopold Museum is dedicating the most comprehensive retrospective to date in Austria to this influential innovator and pioneer of modern European sculpture. Featuring around 50 sculptures as well as some 100 paintings, drawings and etchings, the exhibition initiated and curated by Hans-Peter Wipplinger affords detailed insights into Lehmbruck’s oeuvre.

“The genesis of Wilhelm Lehmbruck’s oeuvre is impressively illustrated through eminent groups of exhibits that include all the artist’s central works.” --Hans-Peter Wipplinger

This largely chronological presentation traces Lehmbruck’s artistic development from his early years at the Düsseldorf School of Arts and Crafts (1895–1899) and his time as a student at the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts (1901–1906) all the way to his most famous works created during the period he spent in Paris (1910-1914). The exhibition also focuses on the uncompromising work he created between the outbreak of World War I and his suicide in 1919 which documents the last period of the artist’s oeuvre.

Lehmbruck’s artistic career began with his 1902 plaster figure Bathing Woman, a bronze cast of which was acquired by the Düsseldorf Academy in 1905. Earning the artist first recognition, this initial success also afforded him the financial means to embark on a long-awaited, extensive trip through Italy. During this “searching” period of his early oeuvre, the artist was primarily interested in the artists of the Italian Renaissance, above all in Michelangelo, as well as in the living conditions of ordinary working-class people from the industrialized area surrounding Duisburg.

Probably influenced by the socio-critical works of the Belgian artist Constantin Meunier, whose work Lehmbruck would have likely encountered at the 1904 art exhibition held in Düsseldorf, he created realistic works, such as The Stone Roller (1905). The pose of the figure depicted in the relief Seated Miner with Miner’s Lamp of the same year is reminiscent of The Thinker by Auguste Rodin, whose works were also featured in a first comprehensive presentation in Düsseldorf in 1904. Rodin’s oeuvre would continue to inspire works by Lehmbruck, including Seated Youth (1917) and Head of a Thinker (1918). Lehmbruck was also greatly influenced by Rodin’s antagonist Aristide Maillol. As opposed to Rodin’s animated surfaces, Maillol focused on a reduction of means, a concentration of substance and a de-dramatization of his sculptural works.

Already prior to Lehmbruck’s move to Paris in 1910 his works revealed indications of the distinctive sculptural language he would go on to create. Breaking with the canon of forms of his previous understanding of sculpture shaped by academic conventions, Lehmbruck arrived at a more experimental and abstracting design vocabulary that would characterize his time spent in Paris between 1910 and 1914.

Lehmbruck was further encouraged to pursue his own unique path by his personal encounters and friendships with eminent contemporaries, including Alexander Archipenko, Constantin Brâncuși and Amedeo Modigliani. Select works by these artists are featured in the exhibition alongside eminent exhibits by the German Expressionists Käthe Kollwitz and Ernst Barlach, the Belgian Symbolist George Minne, the Belgian Naturalist Constantin Meunier and the Norwegian Symbolist Edvard Munch.

In 1912 the collector and patron of the arts Karl Ernst Osthaus united works by Wilhelm Lehmbruck and Egon Schiele in a dual exhibition at the Museum Folkwang in Hagen. Over 100 years later, this juxtaposition is revisited with this current exhibition at the Leopold Museum. Despite employing formally related artistic means in their Expressionist design vocabulary, there are deliberate differences in the oeuvres of these two artists: while Lehmbruck placed an emphasis on the psychological, Schiele’s main focus was on the physical.

“Lehmbruck and Schiele used formally similar devices, such as torsification, a fragmentation of the body, and exaggerating the proportions of the head and the lines on the forehead.” Marion Bornscheuer in her essay in the exhibition’s catalogue Marion Bornscheuer in her essay in the exhibition’s catalogue

In 1913 two of Lehmbruck’s chief sculptures, Large Standing Figure (1910) and Kneeling Woman (1911) were presented in the Armory Show, the International Exhibition of Modern Art, in New York, Chicago and Boston. Lehmbruck’s works – the only ones by a German sculptor – were prominently displayed between sculptures by Constantin Brâncuşi and Alexander Archipenko

“I believe that we are once again heading for truly great art, and that we will soon find the expression of our time in a monumental, contemporary style. It must be of our time, rather than a reappraisal of older styles, for none of the great eras of the past were founded on the resurrection of styles from previous centuries. The style must be monumental, heroic, like the spirit of our times. For sculpture, like all art, is the greatest expression of the times.” Wilhelm Lehmbruck, “Fragmente“: in Paul Westheim: Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Potsdam-Berlin 1919

The elongated proportions of the work Kneeling Woman have been compared to the sculptures of the Belgian Symbolist George Minne, whose stretched bodies express an inner longing. Minne’s chief work Fountain with Kneeling Youths was first presented in 1906 at the German art exhibition in Cologne. His works may have encouraged Lehmbruck, who also featured in this exhibition, to continue to develop his own style.

In 1913 Lehmbruck created two main works, Pensive Woman and Ascending Youth. According to Hans-Peter Wipplinger, these sculptures “are invested with a formal tension expressing the duality of the spiritual and the material, of body and soul”. The works Lehmbruck created from the outbreak of World War I until his suicide in 1919 represent a final highlight of the exhibition, above all the sculpture The Fallen Man (1915).

“Once upright and full of ideals, the male figure [of The Fallen Man] has now fallen to the ground, appearing as an allegory of a hopeless, downtrodden and threatened existence.” --Hans-Peter Wipplinger in his essay in the exhibition’s catalogue

The figure represents Lehmbruck’s dramatic as well as innovative response to the traumas of World War I. Dismissed from active service on account of his hardness of hearing, Lehmbruck experienced the terror and suffering of war as a war painter and medical orderly in a field hospital.

With the help of Max Liebermann, Lehmbruck was able in late 1916 to go into exile in Switzerland. He spent the following years in Zurich, which had become a place of refuge for countless war opponents. The works of his late oeuvre reflect the sensitivity and fragility of Lehmbruck’s character as well as his profound humanity.

“The sculptures of those years are characterized by introverted gestures and the strong sense of soulfulness of his figures. Withdrawn into themselves, the bodies appear charged with emotions such as desperation, mourning, shame and melancholy, investing them with a special expression of a suggestive concept of the human body.” --Hans-Peter Wipplinger in his essay in the exhibition’s catalogue

The exhibition presents Lehmbruck not only as the most important Expressionist sculptor but also as an excellent draftsman and painter. The Vienna retrospective features an eminent selection of works on paper and paintings by Lehmbruck, including the painting Martha (1912), the portrait of his wife Anita Bust Portrait of Mrs. L (1912) and the oil painting Bathsheba (1913).

Two central works stand out from the artist’s late oeuvre – the works Head of a Thinker, arguably his most expressive sculpture, as well as Praying Woman, both created in 1918.

The last period of the artist’s oeuvre reveals his interest in the expressive possibilities of the theater. Lehmbruck was especially taken with the performance art of the young Austrian actress Elisabeth Bergner, for whom he harbored an unrequited love. In countless graphic works he expressed his admiration for Bergner and the theater.

After the War, physical suffering and emotional shocks, the rejection by Elisabeth Bergner and the aftermath of the traumas of war pulled Lehmbruck deeper into the depths of despair and into a sense of alienation from the world and himself. Spiritually broken, Wilhelm Lehmbruck decided to take his own life on 25th March 1919. The honor of becoming a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts, and the recognition of his artistic oeuvre associated with this, was not enough to make the “wounded genius” reconsider this final decision.

Under the National Socialist regime, Lehmbruck’s oeuvre was deemed degenerate and his sculpture Kneeling Woman was used as a centerpiece in the 1937 Munich exhibition “degenerate art”. All works by Lehmbruck were removed from German museums.

“The fact that Lehmbruck’s works were among those declared to be degenerate, and were thus more or less considered worthy of destruction, represents the highest form of recognition that artistic

work can be afforded in the world of power. Can there be any greater proof of the power of artistic design than its validation by dictators and censors who fear it as a potential threat to their claim to power?” --Bazon Brock in his essay in the exhibition’s catalogue

Joseph Beuys referred to the intuitive, spiritual power of Lehmbruck’s work in his speech accepting the Lehmbruck Prize in 1986. A stringent selection of Beuys’s works is placed into a dialogue with works by Lehmbruck in the final part of the exhibition.

“Wilhelm Lehmbruck is arguably the most important German sculptor, along with Joseph Beuys.” --Söke Dinkla in her essay in the exhibition’s catalogue

The juxtaposition of works by these two artists, whose oeuvres resemble one another especially in the area of drawing and with regards the aspects of fleetingness and incompleteness, illustrates once again the impact of Lehmbruck’s work, which extends far beyond his time.

“With their drawings, which both artists considered to be on a par with their sculptural oeuvre, they achieved what Beuys had so aptly described in 1986 as their common artistic goal in that medium as well: capturing not merely the physical but also the emotional material.” --Marion Bornscheuer in her essay in the exhibition’s catalogue

Lehmbruck’s oeuvre is of eminent importance from an art historical perspective and, in light of current global political events, is still highly relevant today.

Curator: Hans-Peter Wipplinger