Wilhelm Lehmbruck

German artist, etcher, lithographer, poet and sculptor. His early work was fairly conservative, but when he lived in Paris, 1910-1914, he developed a personalized expressionistic style, angular pose and melancholy, exemplified in his nude "Kneeling Woman," exhibited in 1911. Lehmbruck worked mainly in clay, with some of his work cast in artificial stone to preserve the texture of clay, he was also noted for his pieces done in marble.

At the outbreak of the WW I, he returned to Germany and worked in a hospital. The suffering he witnessed was reflected in the poignancy of his last works. The war brought him to a state of acute depression and he committed suicide on 25 March 1919 in Berlin. There is a museum dedicated to him in Duisburg.