The work by the German sculptor Wilhelm Lehmbruck (1881-1919) was influenced by Expressionism, thus seeking to express emotional experience rather than physical reality. His female nudes often only show a fragment of the female body, such as the torso here. Later Lehmbruck created more elongated figures, marked by a sense of melancholy. His close friend, the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, incorporated his sculpture Torso of a Walking Woman, into the modernist design of Villa Tugendhat in Brno (1928-30), the Czech Republic.