bronze, sculpture
portrait
sculpture
bronze
figuration
sculpture
expressionism
Dimensions 104.0 x 50.0 x 109.0 cm
Wilhelm Lehmbruck's "Seated Youth" at the Städel Museum embodies the quiet tension of being. The sculpture feels to me like a deep exhale. Lehmbruck coaxes the form from the material, giving us a slumped figure, chin to chest. I feel for the artist, you know? Imagine the studio filled with plaster dust, the scrape of tools, a constant shifting between intention and accident. What was he thinking when he pressed those fingers into the figure's thigh, creating that beautiful, almost mournful indentation? Was it a struggle to find the right pose, a dance between control and release? It reminds me a little of Rodin, but more elongated, more melancholic. Ultimately, Lehmbruck’s work becomes a mirror, reflecting our own moments of introspection, worry, and quiet resignation. These artists are always talking to each other across time, inspiring us to embrace the space of ambiguity. There's no fixed meaning here, just a feeling.
Comments
Lehmbruck executed the ‘Seated Youth’ during the First World War. It bears various titles in the literature: ‘Mourner’, ‘Thinker’, ‘Friend’, even ‘Tired Warrior’. The slender, downcast figure seems to be listening to a voice deep within. In place of dramatic gestures there is inward contemplation and silent pain. The voids between the elongated limbs are also ‘interior space’ and thus as much a part of the sculpture as the body itself. Ten years after Lehmbruck’s suicide, a bronze cast of the sculpture was erected as a war memorial at Duisburg’s Cemetery of Honour.
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