BERLIN (AP) — A major show of famous scenes by Casper David Friedrich is opening on the 250th anniversary of his birth in Berlin, where he made his breakthrough and where a 1906 exhibition featured the German Romantic master. I began a sustained revival of interest.
The show at the German capital’s Alte National Gallery, which organizers presented Wednesday before opening to the public on Friday, includes some of Friedrich’s best-known works.
Among them are the two paintings that catapulted him to fame in 1810, “Monk by the Sea” – depicting a solitary figure against a background of a dark sea and sinking sky – and “Abbey in the Oaks.” The works were purchased by Frederick William III, King of Prussia.
Visitors can also look forward to classics such as the dramatic “Sea of Snow”, “Chalk Cliffs on Rügen” and “The Whatsmann” depicting one of Germany’s highest peaks. The exhibition brings together 115 of Friedrich’s paintings and drawings, tracing the progression of his career.
Although the paintings are based on painstaking drawings, some of which are part of the exhibition, they are “not depictions of nature, but actually visions of the great philosophical questions of human existence,” said museum director Ralph Gilles. “
Gilles described Friedrich as perhaps the most famous German painter after Albert Dürer.
It wasn’t always like that. Friedrich, who was born in Greifswald in northeastern Germany in 1774 and died in 1840, was largely forgotten in the second half of the 19th century. He returned to the public eye in 1906 thanks to an exhibition celebrating a century of German art at Berlin’s National Gallery, which featured 93 of Friedrich’s works and celebrated him as a master of light and atmosphere.
The new show leans in part on that exhibition and includes 45 works that were seen by the public in Berlin more than a century ago.
Friedrich, who painted during the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, has been associated with nationalism. This is directly reflected in at least one painting, “Rocky Valley,” which features the tomb of Arminius, a Roman-era figure known as a Germanic national hero.
His work is characterized by an “openness to interpretation” that has been repeatedly exploited, with Gilles saying that the Nazis “tried to put Friedrich in his pocket.”
This made it a bit difficult for Frederick’s work to gain attention after World War II. Gleis added that the English-speaking art world helped revive interest in him as a “universal artist”.
Friedrich “created images of desire and hope, but also of doubt,” curator Bridget Verwebe told a news conference.
The Berlin show is one of three major partially overlapping exhibitions in Germany to mark Frederick’s 250th birthday, with museums in Berlin, Hamburg and Dresden collaborating. The first, in Hamburg, closed earlier this month after attracting large numbers of visitors. An exhibition in Dresden will open in August.
German museums will later support an exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gliss said.
Exhibition at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin’s Neoclassical Museum Island The complex, titled “Casper David Friedrich. Unlimited Landscapes,” runs Friday through Aug. 4. Museum has extended its opening hours to cope with the expected high demand.
Credit : apnews.com
