Image: Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg
The Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg has extended its exhibition devoted to Anish Kapoor until 18 October 2026, adding more time for visitors to see what the museum describes as the most extensive presentation of his work in Germany in more than a decade. The show is mounted in connection with Kapoor’s Wilhelm-Lehmbruck-Preis from the City of Duisburg and the Rhineland Regional Council, which the museum says recognizes his long-term contribution to contemporary art.
Kapoor, born in Mumbai in 1954, is presented here across a wide range of works, from early pigment pieces to mirror sculptures and monumental installations. The museum’s exhibition text emphasizes the diversity of the artist’s practice and the way his forms, colours and materials challenge viewers both sensorially and intellectually. Rather than focusing on a single period or medium, the display brings together different stages of Kapoor’s career in a single survey.
According to the museum, the exhibition is designed specifically in relation to the architecture of the Lehmbruck Museum, described in the source as an iconic modernist building. Kapoor’s works are positioned as part of an immersive parcours in which light, shadow, space and material alter perception. The museum frames the encounter as one in which body, space and consciousness are linked, and where sculpture becomes an experiential rather than purely object-based form.
The curatorial emphasis also reaches beyond form into themes that recur throughout Kapoor’s work: identity, memory, vulnerability and infinity. The museum’s exhibition text asks how to represent what cannot be grasped or seen and what lies at the core of human experience. In that sense, the presentation links Kapoor’s practice to questions of inner life and spiritual dimension, while aligning it with the museum’s own architectural setting.
The museum says the exhibition offers a rare opportunity to experience Kapoor’s work in its emotional and philosophical breadth. Works cited on the museum’s website include 'Past, Present, Future' (2006), 'Double S-Curve' (2019), 'Brandy Wine and Purple' (2016), 'Mother as a Mountain' (1985), 'Spire' (2017) and 'Non-Object (Black)' (2025), indicating the range of objects and installations included in the current presentation. The museum also notes that Monopol is media partner for the exhibition.
The extension comes alongside a summer programme of public activities tied to the show. These include 'Kunst & Stulle: 'Anish Kapoor'' on 6 August at 17:30, 'Pay What You Want!' with a public guided tour of 'Anish Kapoor' on 7 August, and several Sunday tours with different focus titles, including 'Anish Kapoor trifft Wilhelm Lehmbruck: Innerlichkeit und Spiritualität' on 9 August, 'Anish Kapoor: Der Raum des Unsichtbaren' on 16 August, and 'Anish Kapoor: Zustände der Wandlung und des Werdens' on 18 August.
Further family and learning programmes are also scheduled in August as part of the exhibition’s accompanying events. 'Museumsspaß in den Sommerferien: 'Farben und Lichtgeheimnisse'' runs from 3 to 7 August, 'Spiegelwelten' from 10 to 14 August, and 'Imagine! – Illusionen gestalten' from 17 to 21 August, all as workshops for children aged six to 12. The exhibition itself remains on view at the Lehmbruck Museum until 18 October 2026.
