Masterpiece of the Month

The Sea of Ice (1824)
Caspar David Friedrich (1774-11840). Oil on canvas, 96.7 x 126.9 cm. Kunsthalle, Hamburg.

 A collossal spear jutting out of the depths of the ocean. A finger that scars the landscape and points to God's creation. A funerary monument carved by ice and wind to mark the resting place of the crew of a sunken ship, its stern barely visible on the right... This scene conjures up all sorts of ideas, but all remind us of a furious, primeval force as terrifying as it is beautiful.

 Strong diagonals cross the canvas -the main projection is echoed in the background and its sides-, reinforcing a sense of motion and  agressiveness; you can almost hear the ice cracking and swallowing the wooden boat. The clear blue skies and the smooth ice sheets reveal Friedrich's masterful technique: the heaps and masses are treated individually, their jagged edges glittering in the sunlight, each of them in a unique tone, some are translucent blue or resemble marble and stone rather than ice, especially the brownish blocks in the lower foreground -probably as  a result of Friedrich's live studies of frozen rivers, which don't work as well when trying to represent a mighty polar iceberg-. However, it's incredible how he achived such uniformity with such a simple composition (causing a stir at the time), such amazing amount of detail, and a sense of action worthy of an NGS documentary 

 Also known as The Wreck of Hope and The Polar Sea, this landscape retells the fate of an English Arctic expedition- as imagined by Friedrich. Because, although an inscription on the ship reads HMS Griper, which was part of an English voyage to the North pole, the expedition was triumphant and none perished. In fact, the painting was originally called An Idealized Scene of an Arctic Sea, with a Wrecked Ship on the Heaped Masses of Ice. But although this scene is completely imaginary, it manages to convey the monumentality of nature and its vast, inmense power, capable of anihilating our own safe little world when we least expect it.

Artist of the month

Caspar David Friedrich (Greifswald, 1774 - Dresden,1840)
German painter

Self portrait (1810)
 Black chalk
Staatliche Museen, Berlin

Once, Friedrich stated the aim of his work "is not the faithful representation of air, water, rocks and trees... but the reflection of [the artist's] soul and emotion in these objects" and the painter with the inquisitive gaze and wild hair layed the foundations of Romanticism, where the spiritual and personal came before the familiar reality, changing the meaning of landscape painting and becoming one of Germany's best known artists.

 Born in the Baltic seaport of Griefswald (then part of the Sweedish Pomerania),where he began his artistic studies, continuing them in Copenhague until 1789. Around 1812, he had his first major exhibitions and was elected at the Berlin Academy two years before. He finally settled in Dresde, where he married in 1820 at the height of his career as professor at the Dresden academy. This was also the period when people started to inhabit his works, showing a deeper awereness of humanity.  But he fell out of favour after his 1835 stroke , dying "half -mad". However, his work was resurrected by the Surealists and Expressionists in the first quarter of the 20th century, hailing his great imagination; while during the Nazi regime he was considered a major example of German nationalism. Unsurprisingly, he was forgotten again after WWII and only regained popularity recently when a suspected fake was acquired by London's National Gallery in the 1980s.

Morning in the Mountains (c.1823)
Oil on canvas
State Hermitage.

 His large canvases depict landscapes with almost photographic detail -even though he never painted directly from nature, rather from his own head-  employing unique techniques to create effects such as mist or early morning light. Large mountains, ominous seas and forbidding forests all gain a personal meaning according to the Romantic principle of natural panteism, where the brutal force of nature irrevocably dominates -and often destroys- humanity... Thus, the human presence in Friedrich's paintings is tiny, almost invivible (can you spot the shepherds in the painting above?)  emphasizing the titanic power of nature, and always with their backs turned to us, absorbed by its beauty. Another common feature of his works are gloomy graveyards and religious visions -gothic churches sprouting from the fog, crosses atop boulders- supporting the other Romantic belief in deep spirituality and the impending threat of death