Vatican Museums

The painter, sculptor and engraver Karl Schmidt-Rottluff is, along with Heckel and Kirchner, one of the leading figures of the group Die Brücke. The work Gebet was donated to the Vatican collections by his wife Emy Frisch, whom the artist had married in 1918, the year in which he produced this small bronze. It belongs to a series of sculptures completed during the war years, a period in which the artist produced very few paintings, devoting himself mainly to drawing, engraving and sculpture, in part also due to the difficulty of obtaining canvases and paints. The female figure, kneeling and with her hands together in prayer, reveals the artist’s fascination with African art, giving rise to the formal synthesis and accentuation of gestures, a primary expressive element.