Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature
Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature
Caspar David Friedrich reimagined European landscape painting by portraying nature as a setting for profound spiritual and emotional encounters. Discover this first comprehensive U.S. exhibition of his work featuring over 70 selections.
FREE
The Met Museum
February 08, 2025 to May 10, 2025
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Artist Details

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.

Exhibition Details

This exhibition presents over 70 works by Friedrich. Oil paintings, finished drawings, and working sketches from every phase of the artist’s career, along with select examples by his contemporaries, illuminate how Friedrich developed a symbolic vocabulary of landscape motifs to convey the personal and existential meanings that he discovered in nature.

The exhibition situates Friedrich’s art within the tumultuous politics and vibrant culture of 19th-century German society and, by extension, highlights the role of German Romanticism in shaping modern perceptions of the natural world.

Location

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Gallery 199
1000 5th Ave
New York, NY 10028

Image: Detail of “ Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog,” Photo Elke Walford / courtesy of The Met