To commemorate the 250th anniversary of Caspar David Friedrich’s birth, the Alte Nationalgalerie has partnered with the Kupferstichkabinett, another division of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, to present the first major exhibition on the work of the most important painter of German Romanticism in Berlin. Approximately 60 paintings and 50 drawings by Caspar David Friedrich from Germany and abroad will be on display, including many of his most famous works. Such a retrospective is long overdue in Berlin, not only because numerous acquisitions and public exhibitions in the Prussian capital during the artist’s lifetime contributed to his early fame, but also due to the fact that the Alte Nationalgalerie houses one of the world’s largest collections of Friedrich’s paintings. Moreover, the 1906 Deutsche Jahrhundertausstellung in Berlin marked the turning point in Friedrich’s critical legacy, as the forgotten artist was rediscovered by a new generation of viewers.

The anniversary exhibition CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH. Art for a New Age offers the first comprehensive show in decades of works by the most important painter of German Romanticism. The Hamburg presentation is a thematically organized Friedrich retrospective with more than 50 paintings, including many iconic works. The exhibition also includes some 90 drawings and selected works by his fellow artists and friends. The central theme is a new relationship between humankind and nature in Friedrich’s landscape paintings. A separate section of the exhibition devoted to Friedrich’s reception in contemporary art shows how Friedrich’s work continues to resonate today.

In the city where the painter was born, five exhibitions will showcase his work and life from a wide variety of perspectives. Foremost among these are the three special exhibitions at the Pomeranian State Museum, which present the painter’s drawings from the museum’s collection to the public for the first time or show world-famous originals such as the “Chalk Cliffs on Rügen” so close to the original location. At the painter’s birthplace, the Caspar David Friedrich Center, a special exhibition sheds light on the “Hidden Life of Paintings”. In the St. Spiritus Cultural Center, the exhibition “Caspar David Friedrich: Friends and Acquaintances in Greifswald” is dedicated to the landscape painter’s Greifswald network.

More than 200 events will take place in Greifswald, the birthplace of Caspar David Friedrich, in 2024. From concerts to theater, hands-on activities, lectures and sermons, there is something for everyone. Greifswald also offers a unique combination of authentic places from Friedrich’s life, preserved pictorial motifs such as the ruins of Eldena Abbey and original paintings in the Pomeranian State Museum. Come to Greifswald and rediscover Caspar David Friedrich.

His works are iconic: Caspar David Friedrich is one of the most influential German artists of the Romantic period. Few people are aware, however, that his artistic career began in Weimar. In fact, one of his early patrons was none other than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The Klassik Stiftung Weimar commemorates the 250th anniversary of Caspar David Friedrich with a special exhibition that explores this mutual attraction as never before. The exhibition is the first ever to present Weimar as a place of Romantic art and culture, featuring some of Friedrich’s most important works from the holdings of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar.

In addition to highlighting current museum activities, the exhibition includes provenance findings and art technological examinations of Weimar’s paintings and drawings, carried out by museum conservators in cooperation with the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM).

Caspar David Friedrich reimagined European landscape painting by portraying nature as a setting for profound spiritual and emotional encounters. Working in the vanguard of the German Romantic movement, which championed a radical new understanding of the bond between nature and the inner self, Friedrich developed pictorial subjects and strategies that emphasize the individuality, intimacy, open-endedness, and complexity of our responses to the natural world. The vision of the landscape that unfolds in his art—meditative, mysterious, and full of wonder—is still vital today.

Presented in honor of the 250th anniversary of Friedrich’s birth in 2024, Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature is the first comprehensive exhibition dedicated to the artist held in the United States. Organized in cooperation with the Alte Nationalgalerie of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, and Hamburger Kunsthalle, with unprecedented loans from more than 30 lenders in Europe and North America, the exhibition will present approximately 75 works by Friedrich.