Thinking about Barlach made me curious to know more about the Expressionist sculptors.
So far as I know the first Expressionist sculptor was Rodin, a Frenchman. For Rodin nature was a starting point but it always had to be modified by human bias. You could argue that sculpture was always like that but Rodin added exploration and risk and performance.
Rodin worked in clay, marble and bronze but lots of later German sculptors preferred wood. Maybe that's because their African influences worked in that medium. Maybe it's because wood was cheap and the artists were poor. One sculptor (Kirchner, above) said he liked wood because the process of carving and creation were visible on the finished piece for all to see. Conventional sculpture was worked in clay and handed off to others
for metal casting. Only in wood could you say that the final product was produced by a single mind.
Incidentally, I like the way Kirchner frequently photographed his sculptures (above) against painted patterns.
