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Biography of Wilhelm LehmbruckName: Wilhelm LehmbruckBirth Date: January 4, 1881 Death Date: March 25, 1919 Place of Birth: Meidereich, Germany Nationality: German Gender: Male Occupations: sculptor Wilhelm Lehmbruck The German sculptor Wilhelm Lehmbruck (1881-1919) revitalized the image of the human figure in northern Europe. His particular innovation in treating the figure was his use of attenuated proportions.Wilhelm Lehmbruck, the son of a miner, was born in Meidereich on Jan. 4, 1881. He studied at the School of Applied Arts in Düsseldorf (1895-1899). When his father died in 1899, Lehmbruck worked part time as a draftsman. In 1901 he entered the master class of Karl Janssen at the Düsseldorf Academy. Lehmbruck's work of this period thematically related to the naturalist literature of Émile Zola and Gerhart Hauptmann, and he depicted the urban industrial worker.The 1904 International Art Exhibition in Düsseldorf included many sculptures by Auguste Rodin, which had an immediate impact on Lehmbruck's work. He began to concentrate almost exclusively on the female form, executing portraits, nudes, and mother and child groups. When the government purchased his …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…bending poses, which express his desire to transform the nude from academic artifice to relevant image.Lehmbruck returned to Germany in 1914, and he continued to refine those artistic problems first stated in his Parisian works. The increasing interiorization of his figures and the more reflective and inward-turning poses betray his own anxiety about World War I. And while his sculpture attempts to state a more universal image of reflection, even despair, it is in Lehmbruck's drawings that one sees the greater affinities with the German expressionist painters. He committed suicide in Berlin on March 25, 1919. Further Reading The most recently published and thorough assessment of Lehmbruck's work is August Hoff, Wilhelm Lehmbruck: Life and Work (1961; trans. 1969). Werner Hofmann, Wilhelm Lehmbruck (1958), is the other critical work available in English. The most inclusive listing of the sculptor's work is in the catalog to the Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg entitled Wilhelm Lehmbruck Sammlung (2 vols., 1964). |