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| Caspar David Friedrich |
| 1774-1840 |
| European Artist |
| Friedrich was born in 1774 in Greifwald, Germany. After training in the Academy in Copenhagen from 1794 to 1798, Friedrich settled in Dresden and later taught at the Dresden Academy. His first works were sepia landscapes. In 1807 he began working in oils and immediately caused a sensation: his Cross in the Mountains, installed in a private chapel, used landscape to evoke the spirit of the Crucifixion. Shocked by his use of secular genre for a religious purpose, critics accused Friedrich of sacrilege. Friedrich aimed to produce a Christian art based in nature, divested of standard biblical imagery. "God is everywhere," he said, "in the smallest grain of sand." Friedrich's oeuvre encompasses scenes of ruined Gothic churches, cemeteries, desolate landscapes, and silent figures in vast spaces, all deeply spiritual and often melancholy. He was the first artist to create awe before nature and to infuse landscape and light with emotional and symbolic content. |
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