Trained in his homeland of Germany, the sculptor Wilhelm Lehmbruck was attracted to the work of two French sculptors often seen as polar opposites: Auguste Rodin and Aristide Maillol. He synthesized the spirituality and structure of Rodin with the linear grace of Maillol to produce his own quiet, introverted works. In 1910, he moved to Paris, where he would remain until the outbreak of World War I. There he fell in with other international avant-garde sculptors, such as Constantin Brancusi, Giovanni Modigliani, and Alexander Archipenko. About the same time, he began to make prints, which, like Recumbent Nude, reduce the form to its bare essence.