With a receptive audience developing in Paris, where the Franco-Uruguayan poet and art critic Jules Laforgue had been celebrating and advocating his prints, Klinger moved to Paris in 1883 where he lived until 1886 or 1887. Klinger first began sculpting about 1883, and sculpture slowly came to dominate his output in his later years. He conceived and started work on his "Beethoven" sculpture while in Paris but, it was not completed and fully realized until 1902. In 1889 Les XX (The Twenty) invited Klinger to exhibit his work in their annual winter exhibition that year in Brussels. He moved to Rome in 1889, staying until 1893, studying the Italian masters, where the 15th century artists and works from antiquity are said to have been something of a revelation to him. He also intensified his studies of anatomy, the nude, and the representation of mass and volume during this period of his life. It was a productive time in his career. In the 1890s, Klinger continued his gradual shift away from printmaking in favor of sculpting.