Seated Youth, 1916 – 1917

About the Work

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.