The Duisburg-born sculptor, painter, and graphic artist Wilhelm Lehmbruck (1881–1919) is considered to be one of the most important German sculptors of the classical modern era. Numerous works from his oeuvre form the core of the collection of the museum in Duisburg named after him. Today, the institution places the work of Lehmbruck alongside international sculpture from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by, among others, Constantin Brâncuși, Alberto Giacometti, Auguste Rodin, and Pablo Picasso. This is also the case within the framework of the exhibition CHINA 8: the sculptures exhibited here tell us stories from China’s past, present, and future.

Chinese sculptors are interested in many ways in the social dimension of human activity, adopting at times a fundamentally critical position. Based on traditional sculptural techniques, various forms of expression and new narratives are developed for which the treatment of the respective material is pushed to its limits, the conventional language of forms is overcome, and new contexts are created. With works by thirteen artists, the Lehmbruck Museum is presenting, both indoors and outdoors, the new figuration of contemporary Chinese sculpture.