DUISBURG.- Grace kneels in Duisburg, was forged in 1911 in a Parisian studio. For its creator Wilhelm Lehmbruck, the Kneeling Woman became a completely personal mark of creation. Affecting the art of the modern era like an impulse, with its graceful yet peculiar pose and a gesture that until that time was unique the piece has exercised an immense influence on sculpture and painting in the past hundred years. In 2011 the Kneeling Woman celebrates its anniversary, and the Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg thus dedicates one of the most complex and extensive exhibitions in their history to the piece, curated by an international team managed by Marion Bornscheuer, curator of the Lehmbruck Collection and painting and graphics.

For the 100th birthday, the Lehmbruck Museum's exhibition in three sections examines not only the genesis of motifs for this world-renowned sculpture, but also allows the atmosphere of Paris in the early 20th century to come to life once again. It illuminates the cultural scene at precisely the time in which Wilhelm Lehmbruck lived, worked and exhibited in the French metropolis among artists and intellectuals, in the Café du Dôme, at that time the rendezvous of the Paris bohème, in his backyard studio in the Avenue du Maine and in the legendary Salle 41 of the Salon des Indépendants. And the exhibition also focuses on the cultural context of the era, on music, theatre and dance, and invites visitors to undertake an audio-visual trip through time and delve into the Paris of a century ago, made possible through cooperation with the Duisburg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Duisburg Filmforum and the Deutsche Oper am Rhein.

"We are particularly pleased to gain such outstanding partners for our project," says Raimund Stecker, the director of the LehmbruckMuseum about the exhibition preparations. With loans from the New York MoMa, the Paris Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, the Guggenheim Museum, the Berlin National Gallery, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Fondation Beyeler and other addresses of excellence, Duisburg is preparing a sparkling birthday for one of Lehmbruck's major works. In addition to works from Lehmbruck, the exhibition also displays sculpture, painting and graphic works from Auguste Rodin, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Constantin Brancusi, Maurice Denis, Marcel Duchamp, Robert Delaunay, Amedeo Modigliani, Aristide Maillol, Fernand Léger and Bernhard Hoetger.