Caspar David Friedrich: Art for a New Age

Accompanying the most comprehensive Friedrich retrospective in many years at the Hamburger Kunsthalle, this catalogue explores the relationship between human and nature evoked in Friedrich’s landscapes.

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. It centres on more than sixty paintings, among them many major iconic works, and about 100 drawings. Selected works by Friedrich's colleagues, notably Carl Blechen, Carl Gustav Carus, Johan Christian Dahl, August Heinrich and Georg Friedrich Kersting, 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 Elina Brotherus, Julian Charriae, David Claerbout, Olafur Eliasson, Alex Grein, Hiroyuki Masuyama, Mariele Neudecker, Ulrike Rosenbach, Susan Schuppli, Santeri Tuori and Kehinde Wiley.

These reinterpretations and appropriations of Friedrich's images and themes allow the Romantic view of nature to enter into a fascinating dialogue with contemporary perspectives on nature and the discourse on ecological issues.

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