Adolescent à genoux, I.

George Minne‘s »Kneeling Youth I« belongs to a series of sculptures of young boys which the Belgian artist began in the 1890s. The figures all share the same pose, an expressive introspection, and a very slender but nevertheless closed form. Embracing their upper bodies with both arms, they lean their head slightly to one side. The elongated proportions were perceived by some contemporaries as “Gothic”, and frequently classified as Jugendstil. Here Minne departs from the natural dimensions of the body, without choosing abstraction.

However, the interpretation of his figures, which dispense with any room-filling gestures, remains open. Are they self-involved or melancholy? Do they perhaps depict the Narcissus of Greek mythology? Or are we presented with a symbol of the impenetrable inner life of man? Minne’s art, in reference to the exhibition of the same name at the Kunsthalle Mannheim in 1912, is also described as “Expressive Sculpture” (Ausdrucksplastik). Its influence on artists such as Wilhelm Lehmbruck (1881–1919) was so great that to this day it is considered one of the most important sculptural achievements on the road to modernity.