Caspar David Friedrich as a pioneer of modernism

Hamburg Art Gallery - Caspar David Friedrich as a pioneer of modernism

No one is more synonymous with German Romanticism than Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840). The fact that the famous artist was also a pioneer of modernism is shown in a major exhibition at the Hamburger Kunsthalle to mark his 250th birthday. "The central theme is the novel relationship between man and nature in Friedrich's landscape depictions.

In the first third of the 19th century, he provided significant impetus to turn the landscape genre into "art for a new age"," said Director Alexander Klar in Hamburg. In the coming year, Berlin and Dresden will also dedicate thematically independent exhibitions to the romantic artist.

Extremely rare Friedrich loans such as the paintings "Chalk Cliffs on Rügen" (around 1818-1822), "Monk by the Sea" (1808-1810) and "Two Men Contemplating the Moon" (1819/20) can be seen from December 15 to April 1 alongside the paintings "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog" (around 1817) and "The Sea of Ice" (1823/24) from the Hamburger Kunsthalle 's collection. A total of more than 60 paintings and around 100 drawings as well as works by artist friends are on display. The enduring fascination of Friedrich's works is demonstrated by a second separate section of the exhibition dedicated to Friedrich's reception in contemporary art.

The cliché of the gloomy brooder

The exhibition begins with various (self-)portraits of the artist, who was born in Greifswald in 1774. "Friedrich was not just the gloomy brooding man. These clichés are problematic," said curator Markus Bertsch. In Dresden, where he settled in 1798, the artist systematically trained the tools he needed for his later works. "His drawings are already strongly concerned with human emotions such as melancholy, loneliness and longing," said Bertsch. He later rethought landscape painting by developing a form of painting that is highly precise in its details, but invites the viewer to think through its composition and few meaningful pictorial objects.

In the painting "Ruine Oybin" (1812), the architecture is complemented by a cross, an altar and a sculpture of the Madonna. The painting invites reflection on questions of faith. In the later painting "Hutten's Grave" (1823/24), on the other hand, a reference to political discussions is more obvious. The ruin now becomes a place of remembrance for the humanist Ulrich von Hutten (1488-1523) and protagonists of the Wars of Liberation, which overcame Napoleonic rule but did not lead to the democratization that many had hoped for. In his most famous work, "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog" (1817), Friedrich combines several aspects that are typical of Romantic art: the experience of the summit, solitude, merging with nature and the motif of seeing.

Friedrich's influence on modern art

The painting "Monk by the Sea" (1808-1810) confronts the viewer with a radical emptiness that already surprised the contemporary public. In a comment on the painting, Friedrich revealed a critical attitude towards the figure on the beach. He characterizes her as a person who presumes to want to understand, unravel and control everything. In his major work "The Arctic Ocean" (1823/24), Friedrich also clearly rejected the human urge to explore as well as any sense of superiority over a supposedly controllable nature.

The second part of the exhibition shows how his works have influenced contemporary artists. "The tension between environmental destruction and the longing for 'untouched nature' forms a continuity from Romanticism to the present day," said Bertsch. Finnish artist Elina Brotherus, for example, stages herself in an interpretation of the "Wanderer". The photographer Andreas Mühe also restages Friedrich's paintings and places himself in the picture as a small, naked figure from behind, while the US artist Kehinde Wiley critically reflects on the western, white-dominated art canon. A color circle by Danish artist Olafur Eliasson shows the exact pigments of the painting "The Arctic Ocean" - albeit in a highly abstracted composition.