Existential Sculpture
The Belgian artist Berlinde De Bruyckere (*1964) is one of today’s leading sculptors. Her work is internationally acclaimed, and recently caused a stir at the Venice Biennale and at Bozar in Brussels in 2024/25. ‘Lift Not the Painted Veil’ is De Bruyckere‘s first solo exhibition in Hamburg.
The existential dimensions of humanity are central to De Bruyckere’s sculptural and graphic work, which circles around violence and and vulnerability, desire and oppression, loss, consolation and the longing for transcendence. De Bruyckere evokes the force and fragility of these sentiments in distinctly physical, often monumental and spatial sculptures; blankets and animal skins, wood and wax are some of her preferred materials. Organic abstraction and often hyper-realistic figuration merge in works of great intensity. De Bruyckere creates universally relevant images against the rich background of European traditions of representation, tracing wide arcs between mythology, Christian iconography and the issues of our day.
The wooden sculptures by Ernst Barlach (1870–1938) impressed Berlinde De Bruyckere when she visited our museumin the autumn of 2021, and in conversation she emphasised Barlach’s relevance to her own work and our time. His pieces were an impulse for her to begin a new series of polychrome wooden sculptures, which will have their premiere in our exhibition. In addition De Bruyckere shows a selection of sculptures and drawings from more than three decades in dialogue with pieces by Barlach in our collection.
She has taken the title for this dialogue from a line by the English Romantic Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822): ‘Lift not the painted veil which those who live call Life.’
