Celebrated Symbolist George Minne made emotionally charged, expressive figurative sculptures, woodblock illustrations, and drawings, producing a small but influential body of work, which resonated with that of artists like Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt. He turned from studying architecture to making sculpture in 1886, when he acquired his first studio and began crafting the elongated, sinuous, and taught human figures for which he became known, using plaster, marble, stone, wood, and bronze. Inspired by Auguste Rodin and the writings of Symbolist poets and playwrights Grégoire Le Roy, Maurice Maeterlinck, and Emile Verhaeren, whose texts he would eventually illustrate, he focused on spiritual, emotional, and pre-Modern themes. Ranging from the earthly to the metaphysical, he depicted grieving mothers, introspective male youths, and women with their children, as well as biblical stories and figures lost in prayer.