Belgian artist Berlinde De Bruyckere (*1964) is one of the most important sculptors of our time. Her work has attracted international attention; in 2024, De Bruyckere's works caused a sensation at the Venice Biennale, and the Bozar in Brussels is currently honoring her with an extensive solo show. "Lift Not the Painted Veil" is her first solo exhibition in Hamburg.

Existential dimensions of the human condition are at the heart of her sculptural and graphic work, which revolves around violence and vulnerability, desire and constraint, loss and consolation, pain and the longing for transcendence. De Bruyckere evokes the force and tenderness of such sensations in bodily, often expansive sculptures; blankets and animal skins, wood and wax are among her preferred materials. Organic abstraction and sometimes hyper-realistic figuration merge in works of great urgency. De Bruyckere creates universally valid images against the backdrop of rich European traditions of representation, spanning wide arcs between mythology, Christian iconography and contemporary themes.

In fall 2021, Berlinde De Bruyckere visited our museum. She was impressed by the wooden sculptures of Ernst Barlach (1870-1938), whose particular relevance for her work and our present day she emphasizes. Barlach's wood sculptures gave her the impetus to revisit an earlier interest in polychrome (i.e. colored) sculpture. The first work to emerge from this exploration is celebrating its exhibition premiere with us. De Bruyckere is also showing selected sculptures and drawings from more than three decades in dialog with works by Barlach from our collection.

Berlinde De Bruyckere has chosen a line of poetry by the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) as the title for her dialogue: "Lift not the colorful veil that those who live call life".

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