400 illustrations

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

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.

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.