The Invention of Romanticism: Friedrich's Revolutionary Vision

Description

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) was a German painter, printmaker and draughtsman, today regarded as one of the most significant artists of early German Romanticism. Through his effect-oriented, constructed pictorial inventions that contradict conventional notions of romantic painting as emotional expression, he made an original contribution to modern art. In his major works, Friedrich revolutionarily breaks with the traditions of landscape painting from the Baroque and Classical periods. His thematic and motif canon unites landscape and religion preferentially into allegories of solitude, death, afterlife concepts and redemptive hopes. Friedrich's melancholic worldview and self-understanding are seen as exemplary for the artist's image during the Romantic era. The painter's works offer open-ended meanings within largely unknown pictorial contexts, engaging the viewer's emotional world in the interpretive process. The semantic openness of the images has led, since Friedrich's rediscovery at the beginning of the 20th century, to numerous often fundamentally different interpretations and theoretical developments from art historical, philosophical, literary, psychological and theological perspectives. Exhibition catalog: Museum Folkwang, Essen (May 5 - August 20, 2006) and Hamburger Kunsthalle (October 7, 2006 - January 28, 2007). 383 pages, numerous illustrations, folio format, hardcover. Excellent condition.