Lehmbruck, Wilhelm (1881 Duisburg - 1919 Berlin)

Lot 2523 limit € 17.000

Bust of the kneeling woman (so-called "bent woman's head"), 1911, cast plaster, gray-green patina, head, shoulder and chest of a young undressed woman, her head tilted down to the left, H approx. 51 cm, the sculpture "The Kneeling Woman" was made first exhibited as a plaster cast in the Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1911. It caused a stir because Theodor Häubler described it as a "Preface to Expressionism". The four known bronze casts of the "Kneeling" were made after Lehmbruck's death, the bust model alone when Part of the full-figure work, was shown from May to July 1914 in the "Exhibition of drawings and sculptures by modern sculptors" in the Kunsthalle Mannheim as "Bust of a woman, terracotta", in the Munich gallery "Neue Kunst" by Hans Goltz in 1915 also as terracotta, 1916 in the collective exhibition Wilhelm Lehmbruck in the Kunsthalle Mannheim as a bronze version.The posthumous casting of Lehmbruck's widow and sons began around 1920/26 The specimen is one of three known casts, made in the 1940s using the "kneeling" figure, which was damaged during transport (loaned to Munich by the widow Anita Lehmbruck), cf. Dietrich Schubert "Wilhelm Lehmbruck Catalog Raisonné of Sculptures 1898 - 1919". The plaster cast uses the old, less perfect tint, which is considered rawer and thus more appealing. It corresponds to Lehmbruck's ideas, who rarely had sculptures made in bronze in order to emphasize the shape of his models more effectively with light-colored surfaces. Provenance: 1940 Bernhard Böhmer, Güstrow, Georg Brühl Collection, Chemnitz, acquired from Güstrow, temporarily on loan to the state Museums Berlin (there erroneously referred to as cast stone), listed in the catalog "Art around 1900", Museum Gera, 1985