In his short life of thirty-eight years, the sculptor Wilhelm Lehmbruck emerged as an isolated figure avoiding the excesses of the experimental movements of his time (the µþ°ùü³¦°ì±ð and the Blaue Reiter) and grafting on to his romantic northern temperament a deep love of Italian and French art and a special admiration of the work of Rodin and Maillol.
His sensitively modelled works in artificial stone or bronze are imbued with a languor and a spirituality, and in his Kneeling Woman and its companion figure, the Youth Ascending, there is lyrical tenderness and elongation of form but never sentimentality or melodrama.
Philip James
