Caspar David Friedrich

Caspar David Friedrich: The Art of Drawing is dedicated to works on paper by the German Romantic artist (1774-1840) and offers a revealing perspective on the function of drawing in his creative process while also making apparent the substantive beauty of his works. Chosen from among major European museums and private collections - most of which have rarely been exhibited - these works of delicate beauty, meticulously rendered en plein air, were subsequently utilized by the artist as components of a modern system of pictorial architecture with which he constructed, far from nature - in his studio - the sublime landscapes that have made him the most celebrated painter of German Romanticism. The nearly 70 works by Friedrich reunited here - executed in pencil, gouache, and watercolor - range from studies realized en plein air to finished works and are organized according to recurring themes in his oeuvre - architecture, ruins, mountains, trees and plants, among others. The loans are brought by the most leading state museums in Germany and Northern Europe; among others, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg; Kunsthalle, Bremen; Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe; Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Dresde; Staatliche Museen zu Berlin-Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin; The National Museum of Architecture, Art; and, Design, Oslo, as well as a large number of international private collectors (Munich, Zurich, Toronto, etc), whose works have been rarely exhibited in public until now.