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The sculptor and painter Gerlinde Beck studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart under Willi Baumeister, among others, and completed an apprenticeship as a precision sheet metal worker. In 1962 she exhibited her series of 'Steles' at the 'Parnass' gallery in Wuppertal. This included the work 'Doppelstele Nr. II', which was acquired for the museum's collection.
Its construction plays with the limits of balance. Stacked cubes of different volumes create a tension that never seems to be stabilised. With her stacked forms, Beck moves on the border between the figurative and the non-objective. Although human features are no longer recognisable in her steles, the proportions and units of measurement are derived from her preoccupation with her own body.
Beck's 'Double Stele No. II' is juxtaposed here with two Expressionist paintings: Schmidt-Rottluff's 'Reading Woman (Else Lasker-Schüler)' and Kirchner's 'Women in the Street'. Both painters experimented with cubism in their depictions. The cubic forms and sharp angles of the sculptures are thus echoed in the paintings.