Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) is renowned as the Romantic painter par excellence, his works icons of an age of major social upheaval. His landscape paintings and drawings broke with traditional patterns of representation and paved new ways of both experiencing and reflecting on the ambivalent relationship between humankind and nature.
Accompanying the most comprehensive Friedrich retrospective in many years, this catalogue reexamines the artist’s groundbreaking work in light of the current climate crisis and postcolonial reflection. It centers on more than sixty paintings and about one hundred drawings. Selected works by Friedrich’s contemporaries, notably August Heinrich, Georg Friedrich Kersting, Ernst Ferdinand Oehme, and Johann Alexander Thiele are also featured.
The second part of Caspar David Friedrich focuses on the contemporary reception of his work. In contributions ranging from video and photography to installations, some twenty artists working across a variety of genres and media explore the Romantic era, its attitude to nature, and the art of Friedrich. The participants include Alex Grein, Swaantje Güntzel, Jochen Hein, Johanna Karlsson, Hiroyuki Masuyama, Loudmila Milanova, Mariele Neudecker, Ulrike Rosenbach, Susan Schuppli, and Santeri Tuori, among others.
Reviews
This is what art history books should be like. The well-written essays are crisp and laser-focused on subjects both esoteric and concrete. The illustrations and paintings are used skillfully. The scholarship has a modern perspective but carefully respects the historical time period when the artwork was created.
— Library Journal
The quintessential art history book on the work of 19th-century German painter Caspar David Friedrich, known for his alluring Romantic landscapes … Presents a captivating show-and-tell of his significant influence and role in European art history and also places his paintings in their appropriate historical contexts … A visual feast.
— Library Journal, Best Nonfiction of 2024
Contributors
Markus Bertsch
Edited By
Markus Bertsch is head of collection, nineteenth century, at Hamburger Kunsthalle.
Johannes Grave
Edited By
Johannes Grave is professor of modern art history with a focus on European Romanticism at the University of Jena. He was awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz-Preis in 2020 for his research on art in the early 1800s, early Renaissance painting, and picture theory.