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From the June 2024 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here . As the pre-eminent painter of German Romanticism, Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) exemplifies the movement’s pursuit of spiritual and emotional communion with the natural world.

Friedrich prioritised authenticity and self-expression over the imitation of Italian Renaissance masters – ‘I see everywhere the tiresome attempt to imitate Old Master paintings and engravings,’ he complained around 1830 – and it was through nature that he and his peers believed humankind might come into contact with the infinite and the divine: ‘Oh holy Nature! How oft must you yield to fashion and subject yourself to human rules?’ In place of traditional religious motifs, Friedrich painted environments that addressed universal themes through a deeply personal symbolic language. Friedrich’s world and the environments he painted were also changing rapidly. In the first of a year of exhibitions in Germany marking the 250th anniversary of the artist’s birth, the Hamburger Kunsthalle called its Friedrich exhibition ‘Art for a New Age’.



(Other exhibitions include the ‘Caspar David Friedrich: Infinite Landscapes’ at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin until 4 August; ‘Caspar David Friedrich: Where it all Started’ in Dresden, from 24 August–5 January 2025 and a trio of exhibitions at the Pommersches Landesmuseum in Greifswald, ending on 5 January 2025.) The Hamburger Kunsthalle’s title was apt. Friedrich l.

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