Caspar David Friedrich

Published to mark the 250th anniversary of Caspar David Friedrich's birth, the most thorough Friedrich retrospective in many years.

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 re-examines the artist's groundbreaking work in light of the urgent challenges in a time of climate crisis and postcolonial reflection. It centres on more than sixty paintings, among them many major iconic works, and about 100 drawings. Selected works by Friedrich's colleagues, notably August Heinrich, Georg Friedrich Kersting, Ernst Ferdinand Oehme and Johann Alexander Thiele are also featured. The second part of the book 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 Caspar David Friedrich. The participants include Alex Grein, Swaantje Güntzel, Jochen Hein, Johanna Karlsson, Hiroyuki Masuyama, Loudmila Milanova, Mariele Neudecker, Ulrike Rosenbach, Susan Schuppli, Santeri Tuori and Kehinde Wiley.

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" (12/2/2024 12:00:00 AM)
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" (9/1/2024 12:00:00 AM)

Markus Bertsch is Head of the 19th-Century Collection at Hamburger Kunsthalle. 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.

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