37 - Wilhelm Lehmbruck

Wilhelm Lehmbruck Mädchenkopf auf schlankem Hals – Kopf der großen Sinnenden 1913/1914 Terracotta with an ochre-beige tint. Height 44 cm. Unsigned. - In very good condition. Schubert 67 II C 7 With an expert report by Siegfried Salzmann, Duisburg, dated 10 Feb. 1986 Provenance Private ownership, Hamburg; Galerie Brockstedt, Hamburg (1986); Achim Moeller Fine Art, New York/Berlin (1986/87); Private collection, Baden-Württemberg Exhibitions Cf. Stuttgart 2018 (Staatsgalerie), Wilhelm Lehmbruck, cat. no. 23, with col. ill. Literature Cf. Georg W. Költzsch, Saarlandmuseum. Skulptur und Plastik. Bestandskatalog, Saarbrücken 1989, p. 214-215; Dietrich Schubert, Die Kunst Lehmbrucks, Dresden 1990, p. 192, with col. ill. IX./1; Ernst-Gerhard Güse, Saarlandmuseum. Meisterwerke des 20. Jahrhunderts, Ostfildern 1999, p. 224ff; Christoph Brockhaus (ed.), Wilhelm Lehmbruck. Das plastische und malerische Werk, Cologne 2005, p. 146-147, with col. ill. “Lehmbruck’s heads, they are the most tender vision. Dreamed melancholy, borne up from the incomprehensible to the light of day.” This is the German art critic Paul Westheim’s (1886-1963) description of Wilhelm Lehmbruck’s busts, which developed out of his monumental sculptures and did not emerge until near the end of his career as a sculptor (Paul Westheim, Lehmbruck, in: Galerie Flechtheim, Düsseldorf 1919, p. 47). Initially, at the beginning of this development, he primarily composed female torsos, but he reduced these down to busts and sculptures of heads from 1911. “Nothing could be more radical for a figurative sculptor who strictly rejected abstraction”, writes Ina Conzen, “if he did not wish to carry out […] an absolutely puristic formal reduction cleansed of any expressivity" (Conzen in: exh. cat. Stuttgart 2018, p. 37). “Mädchenkopf auf schlankem Hals” is an independent, fully valid bust based on the final monumental sculpture, “Große Sinnende”. The slender throat that gave the work its title and the narrow, slightly tilted head rise up out of the shoulders, which serve as a pedestal. The object of the slightly asymmetrical eyes’ gaze remains indeterminate, and they emphasise the impression of someone removed from the realm of time. The soft tonality extending into an ochre, and the matt gloss of the worked surface underscore the work’s elegant appearance. There is scarcely another bust from this period in which Lehmbruck realises his aim of bringing matter to life and achieving an inward expression of spiritualisation as fully as in “Mädchenkopf mit schlankem Hals”.