Skip to Content
Today Open today 11–8

Bust of Kneeling Girl

A work made of cast stone.

Image actions

  • A work made of cast stone.

Date:

1911

Artist:

Wilhelm Lehmbruck
German, 1881–1919

About this artwork

Wilhelm Lehmbruck made his avant-garde breakthrough in 1911 with Kneeling Girl, an over-life-size figure whose expressive melancholy and elongated proportions established the artist’s reputation as an important German Expressionist sculptor. In Bust of Kneeling Girl, he isolated the sculpture’s most poignant passage—the pensive gesture of the tilted head—by provocatively cropping the figure at the midpoint of the breasts. Contemporary critics compared Kneeling Girl and Bust of Kneeling Girl to Gothic sculpture, at the time understood to communicate emotional and spiritual truth more directly than classical academic art. Lehmbruck debuted both sculptures at the Salon d’Automne in Paris, but they achieved their greatest impact in Germany, where the artist returned in 1914 after four years in France.

Status

On View, Gallery 392

Department

Modern Art

Artist

Wilhelm Lehmbruck

Title

Bust of Kneeling Girl

Place

Germany (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

1911

Medium

Cast stone

Inscriptions

Signed on back, proper right: "W. LEHMBRUCK"

Dimensions

49.5 × 47 × 34.3 cm (19 1/2 × 18 1/2 × 13 1/2 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Robert Allerton

Reference Number

1939.406

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

Share

Sign up for our enewsletter to receive updates.

Learn more

Image actions

Share