Caspar David Friedrich

[Wanderer]

Has anyone any plans on how to spend this 250th anniversary year of Caspar David Friedrich's birth? I've said this before but Friedrich is one of my favorite painters. Kentaro Miura is one of the few visual artists whose style matches the awe I feel when seeing one of Friedrich's paintings. However, Miura was not a painter, he was a mangaka and a storyteller first and foremost, however visually magnificent his Berserk is.

I am disappointed that the art museum Ateneum here in Helsinki, Finland, apparently doesn't in any way commemorate this important anniversary.

Caspar David Friedrich is one of my favourite painters. I have managed to admire many of his works over the years, mainly in Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, Munich, Frankfurt, Vienna - and once in Athens, a loan from the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. His works don't draw crowds, so contemplating them in silence and solitude is very possible and infinitely rewarding. There are many details that are not apparent in photographic reproductions and I've particularly been fascinated by his aptitude in depicting light and celestial objects. His human figures, in deep contemplation of the landscape, draw you in the paintings in the most captivating manner.

Knowing that there would be a number of anniversary exhibitions devoted to him in Germany this year, I organized my summer trip to Austria, Germany and Poland partly with the purpose of seeing again as much of his work as I could (including the Berlin anniversary exhibition devoted to him) - and also to see Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer, one of my favourite paintings, for the first time. I'm very glad to say that I managed to do so both being completely alone and with only a couple of other people in the room; no crowds in the Hamburger Kunsthalle or any of the other museums, except for, understandably, the Alte Nationalgalerie, where the exhibition was very well attended, but thankfully without the type of crowding that would be a hindrance in appreciating the works. If all goes well I'm planning to visit Dresden again in November for its own double anniversary exhibitions devoted to C.D.Friedrich's paintings and (much less frequently exhibited to the public) drawings and works on paper.

As for the non-commemoration of his anniversary by the Ateneum in Helsinki, it's probably less due to an oversight or lack of interest and more having to do with the fact that few museums outside of Germany have any works of his in their collections. Athens, too, has planned nothing; as far as I know, there are no Caspar David Friedrich works in the national collections.

[Florestan]

Caspar David Friedrich is one of my favourite painters.

Mine as well.

[Wanderer]

Mine as well.

The portrait of him that you posted a few posts back was part of the Berlin exhibition, along with a couple of others painted by other painters which, you'll be perhaps relieved to know, exude nothing of the sinister, wide-eyed intensity of that weird-looking one (absolutely worthy of Franz von Lenbach, who famously had a thing for painting people - his family included - in sinister poses). It was nice to see him depicted as a normal, congenial human being (at work, palette in hand, working on a painting). Made much more sense.