Belgian sculptor Berlinde De Bruyckere (b. 1964) stands among today's most significant voices in contemporary sculpture. Her work commands international attention: in 2024, her pieces made waves at the Venice Biennale, while Bozar in Brussels currently celebrates her achievements with a major retrospective. "Lift Not the Painted Veil" marks her Hamburg debut.

Her sculptural and graphic practice explores the existential dimensions of human experience—violence and fragility, desire and constraint, loss and solace, pain and the yearning for transcendence. De Bruyckere manifests these profound emotional forces through bodily, often expansive sculptures; textiles and animal hides, wood and wax feature prominently in her material vocabulary. Organic abstraction and hyperrealistic figuration converge in works of compelling intensity. Drawing on rich European artistic traditions, De Bruyckere crafts universal images that traverse mythology, Christian iconography, and contemporary concerns.

In autumn 2021, Berlinde De Bruyckere visited our museum. She was struck by Ernst Barlach's wooden sculptures (1870–1938), recognizing in them a particular kinship with her own practice and our present moment. Barlach's carved wood reinvigorated her earlier engagement with polychromatic sculpture. The inaugural work born from this dialogue is unveiled here in its first exhibition presentation. The show brings together a selection of De Bruyckere's sculptures and drawings spanning three decades, arranged in conversation with Barlach works from our collection.

For this exhibition, Berlinde De Bruyckere draws her title from English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822): "Lift not the painted veil which those who live call life."

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