Courage. Lehmbruck and the Avant-Garde

The Mercedes-Benz Art Collection is supporting the exhibition ‘Courage. Lehmbruck and the Avant-Gard’ with a loan from its collection.

About the exhibition: The Lehmbruck Museum is taking its 60th anniversary as an opportunity to place the theme of ‘courage’ at the centre of an exhibition on Wilhelm Lehmbruck and the avant-garde. Taking Lehmbruck’s work as a starting point, prominent works from the first half of the 20th century will be used to trace the courageous steps and decisions that drive creative processes and bring about change. In this exciting and influential period of art, which was characterised by political upheaval, social conflict, ground-breaking innovations and the horrors of war, artists overcame boundaries and gave form to situations of upheaval. By finding new forms of expression that made it possible to deal with the new, they met the challenges of their time. For the first time, the exhibition presents Lehmbruck’s work in the context of Cubism, Bauhaus and Dadaism. Together with exemplary works by Auguste Rodin, Lehmbruck’s works enter into a dialogue with representatives of the avant-garde, including Alexander Archipenko, Max Ernst, Lyonel Feininger, Hannah Höch, Käthe Kollwitz, Alice Lex-Nerlinger, Henri Laurens, Oskar Schlemmer and Vladimir Tatlin. (Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg)