Germany dedicates all of 2024 to Caspar David Friedrich, with exhibitions and events in several cities

On the occasion of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the birth of Caspar David Friedrich (Greifswald, 1774 - Dresden, 1840), Germany is celebrating the most famous painter of GermanRomanticism with more than 160 events and major exhibitions in different cities across the country. The year dedicated to Caspar David Friedrich will be officially opened on January 20, 2024 at St. Nicholas Cathedral in Greifswald, where Friedrich was baptized, and initiatives will continue throughout 2024.

Major exhibitions include:

The exhibition Caspar David Friedrich - Art for a New Age at the Kunsthalle Museum in Hamburg (Dec. 15, 2023 to April 1, 2024) will be a thematic retrospective focusing on the relationship between man and nature in the artist’s landscape depictions. The exhibition includes about ninety of his drawings and more than fifty paintings, including some of his most iconic works, as well as a selection of works executed by other artists linked to him by friendship. There will also be a section devoted to Friedrich’s fascination with contemporary art to this day, in which works of various genres created by some 20 artists from around the world will be exhibited, which, with different approaches, address the central theme of Friedrich’s work, namely the relationship between man and his environment, a subject as relevant as ever in light of the climate changes of our time.

Greifswald, the town where Friedrich was born and where he began his artistic training, and to which he remained deeply attached throughout his life, pays tribute to the great Romantic painter with a rich program of events. The major historical celebration A Day with Caspar David Friedrich (Aug. 31-Sept. 1, 2024) aims to take the public on a journey through time to the age of Romanticism with exhibitions, guided tours, concerts, activities, and free admission to various cultural institutions. From March to December, on the other hand, temporary exhibitions united by the theme Caspar David Friedrich - The Anniversary will take place at the State Pommersches Landesmuseum. These include Lifelines - A Walk in Drawings & Paintings (April 28 to Aug. 4, 2024), Places of Longing - Chalk Cliffs on Rügen and Greifswald Harbour (Aug. 18 to Oct. 6, 2024), Hometown - Meadows near Greifswald (Oct. 16, 2024 to Jan. 5, 2025), and the interactive exhibition 250 Steps towards Caspar David Friedrich - Romantic Trail & Workshop (March to December 2024). The Caspar David Friedrich Gesellschaft and St. Spiritus Cultural Centers will also host the exhibitions Caspar David Friedrich - The Hidden Life of his Paintings (May to October 2024) and Friedrich and Friends (June to August 2024), while various venues in the city will host the Grand Birthday Party ( Sept. 5, 2024) and the impressive Light Art Festival (November 2024), which are currently being planned.

The Alte Nationalgalerie Museum in Berlin will host the exhibition Caspar David Friedrich - Infinite Landscapes from April 19 to August 4, 2024, which will feature some sixty paintings and fifty drawings from both national and international collections, including some of Friedrich’s most famous works ever. Produced in collaboration with the Kupferstichkabinett, the Drawings and Prints Cabinet of the State Museums of the German capital, this exhibition dedicated to Friedrich’s “infinite landscapes” is also intended to underscore the leading role played by the Alte Nationalgalerie in the “rediscovery” of the major painter of German Romanticism in the early twentieth century: after falling into oblivion in the second half of the nineteenth century, in fact, Friedrich was reevaluated by the major retrospective devoted to him by the Alte Nationalgalerie in 1906, which paid tribute to him as an undisputed master of the play of light and atmosphere and, at the same time, as a precursor of modern art.

Dresden, the city to which Friedrich moved in 1798 and where he lived for more than forty years, will devote to the painter Caspar David Friedrich - Where It All Started, a temporary exhibition in two sections, the first focusing on his pictorial work (Albertinum Museum, Aug. 24, 2024 to Jan. 5, 2025), the second on his graphic work (Kupferstichkabinett Drawings and Prints Cabinet, Aug. 24 to Nov. 19, 2024). If the Albertinum exhibits some of Friedrich’s most famous paintings by comparing them with the landscape paintings of other great masters from whom he drew inspiration (such as, for example, Jakob Ruisdael, Salvatore Rosa, and Claude Lorrain), the Kupferstichkabinett focuses on the drawings executed by Friedrich on his travels, including on foot in nature, highlighting his artistic process characterized by richness of feeling and extreme graphic precision. Both the exhibition and the busy program of side events are thus intended to emphasize the artist’s close connection with various places in the city and surrounding region.

Dresden’s Where It All Started exhibition is also scheduled to open at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2025.

In addition to the many exhibitions scattered throughout Germany, one can also follow in the painter’s footsteps by retracing the places dear to him where he lived and worked. You can walk the 15-kilometer-long Caspar David Friedrich Trail or admire the views of rock towers, spikes and peaks from one of the many vantage points in the Saxon Switzerland National Park. Or walk the 116-kilometer-long"Painter’s Trail," which offers an evocative nature experience.

You can follow in his footsteps today at the most significant places suggested on theGerman Tourist Board’s website, along with travel tips and the many events planned throughout the year to mark his anniversary.

Image: Caspar David Friedrich, Wayfarer on the Sea of Fog, detail (1818; oil on canvas, 95 x 75 cm; Hamburg, Hamburger Kunsthalle). Credits SHK, Hamburger, Kunsthallebpk

Germany dedicates all of 2024 to Caspar David Friedrich, with exhibitions and events in several cities

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