Caspar David Friedrich, Hünengrab im Schnee, 1807
© Albertinum | GNM, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
Foto: Elke Estel/Hans-Peter Klut
The generous exhibition architecture at the Albertinum (24 August 2024 – 5 January 2025) allows visitors plenty of space to probe 47 landscape paintings by Friedrich in all their depth. His principal themes – nature, politics and religion – are all reflected here, unfolding in complex layers. The works are clustered in five cabinets, each dedicated to particular aspects and motifs in his œuvre: figures painted from behind, memories, colours, trees and religion. The clarity of his landscape compositions and the powerful feelings expressed in them were already causing a stir in his lifetime and they have lost nothing of their intensity today.
Caspar David Friedrich, Zwei Männer in Betrachtung des Mondes, 1819/20
© Albertinum | GNM, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
Foto: Elke Estel
Some of Friedrich’s best-known landscapes, among them the “Tetschen Altar”, “Ships in the Harbour in the Evening”, “The Cemetery” and “The Large Enclosure” can only be viewed in Dresden. These paintings by Friedrich are joined in the Albertinum by 19 landscapes from the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Old Masters Picture Gallery) which Friedrich was able to study in detail, seeking input for his own art. They include valuable canvases by Jacob van Ruisdael, Salvator Rosa and Claude Lorrain. A wall of 121 paintings by early 19th-century artists has been designed to emulate the historical annual show at the Dresden Academy. These are works with which Friedrich was well acquainted but from which he sought to set himself apart.
Caspar David Friedrich, Abend am Ostseestrand, 1831
© Albertinum | GNM, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
Foto: Elke Estel/Hans-Peter Klut
Another 60 exhibits have been loaned from Madrid, Prague, Vienna and Winterthur as well as from collections in other German cities, not least Chemnitz, Erfurt, Essen, Lübeck, Mannheim, Schwerin and Weimar, ensuring an intense encounter with the Romantic era and with Friedrich’s visual universe of melancholy and hope. Notable among these are the “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog” from the Kunsthalle in Hamburg and “Moonrise over the Sea” and “The Watzmann” from the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin.
Caspar David Friedrich, Steiniger Strand mit Mondaufgang, um 1835/37
© Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
Foto: Elke Estel/Hans-Peter Klut
More than 160 works on show at the Kupferstich-Kabinett (24 August – 17 November 2024) in Dresden’s Residenzschloss will turn the focus on Caspar David Friedrich’s drawing skills and on the conceptual and creative processes closely linked to his hikes. Friedrich began producing paper-based art before he turned to painting and he remained faithful to this format all his life. With great analytical clarity and accuracy matched by emotional investment he captured landscapes in Dresden, Saxon Switzerland, Greifswald, Rügen and, for example, the Ore Mountains. The paths he roamed become visible in the exhibition, inviting visitors to follow in the artist’s footsteps.
Fragile studies, sketches and drawings made by the artist, normally kept in the museum depository to protect them from light, are accessible to the public in the Kupferstich-Kabinett. Friedrich used pen and pencil to outline coastal landscapes, gnarled trees and rugged rocks in his sketchbooks and he created masterpieces in sepia ink, watercolour and gouache. Here in the Residenzschloss visitors can admire exquisite works on loan from Basel, Paris and Winterthur, rarely revealed specimens such as “Natural Arch in the Uttewalder Grund” from the Museum Folkwang in Essen, “Dolmen by the Sea” from the Klassik Stiftung Weimar and Friedrich’s “Plauenscher Grund” series from the Dresden City Art Gallery.
Das Karlsruher Skizzenbuch im Kupferstich-Kabinett
© Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
Foto: Klemens Renner
One outstanding highlight in this display is the Karlsruhe Sketchbook recently purchased by the Klassik Stiftung Weimar, the SKD and the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz with the support of the Ernst von Siemens Kunststiftung, the Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States and other sponsors. It offers profound insights into early work done by the artist with passion and precision as he experienced nature from within or contemplated it from without.
Friedrich’s complex mental universe is revealed not only by his drawings, but also in a unique manuscript from the holdings of the Kupferstich-Kabinett in which, as a mature artist, he reflects on the art of his time and formulates his own reflections on the theory of art.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by Sandstein Verlag under the title “Caspar David Friedrich. Wo alles begann”. Edited by Holger Birkholz, Petra Kuhlmann-Hodick, Stephanie Buck and Hilke Wagner, it features contributions by Werner Busch, Anke Fröhlich-Schauseil, Johannes Grave, Florian Illies and many more; 432 pages, € 48 (museum price € 36), ISBN: 978-3-95498-829-7.
The digital services provided in the Albertinum and at the Residenzschloss are complemented by a wide range of online options. These will gradually expand and will remain permanently accessible after the exhibition finishes its run. Visitors will be able, for example, to experience a 3-D tour of the show in the comfort of their own homes. With the aid of the interactive platform voices (https://voices.skd.museum/) they can also trace the networks to which Friedrich belonged, explore the places where his works originated and examine his paintings and drawings, including the Karlsruhe Sketchbook.
Peter-Götz Güttler, Medaille auf den 250. Geburtstag von Wilhelm Lebrecht Götzinger, 2008
© Münzkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
The jubilee exhibition at the Albertinum and Kupferstich-Kabinett will be accompanied by a temporary show in the Münzkabinett (Coin Cabinet) at the Residenzschloss on the theme of “Caspar David Friedrich and the Money of his Day” (24 August 2024 – 5 January 2025). This little presentation offers insights into the financial habits of Friedrich and his contemporaries in the early 19th century. The years spent by the artist in Dresden were marked by widespread political, economic and social upheaval in Saxony and across Europe, reflected not least in coins, banknotes, letters and conversion tables of the period. The Münzkabinett casts an additional spotlight on the artist’s life with a display of coins, banknotes, valuable items and archive records, price lists, income tables and objects for keeping cash. There is also a selection of medals forged in honour of the great Romantic painter or else inspired by his art.
