The exhibition “Dreams of Freedom. Romanticism in Russia and Germany ”.
The organizers and curators of the exhibition, which these days opens to the general public at the Dresden Albertinum, declared the importance of building “cultural bridges” between German and Russian society, RIA Novosti reports.
As a result of cooperation between the State Art Collections (SKD) of Dresden and the Tretyakov Gallery, the exhibition Dreams of Freedom. Romanticism in Russia and Germany ”includes masterpieces of romanticism from both collections, including works by the greatest artists of the first quarter of the 19th century, including Caspar David Friedrich, Philip Otto Runge, Johann Friedrich Overbeck, Alexander Ivanov, Alexey Venetsianov, Orest Kiprensky, Karl Bryullov.
In total, more than 140 paintings are presented in Dresden, including from the Hermitage, the Russian Museum, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, the Berlin National Gallery, the Kunsthalle Hamburg, the Novalis Museum in Oberwiederstedt.
The exhibition was previously shown at the Tretyakov Gallery on Krymsky Val, where more than 300 exhibits were collected: about 200 paintings, graphic works, installations, historical artifacts, as well as archival materials.
The decrease in the number of exhibits in comparison with the Moscow exhibition, according to the curators, is due solely to the fact that the area of the premises in the Albertinum is two times less than in the Tretyakov Gallery.
“Our exhibition in Moscow was historical and artistic and it was difficult to see and evaluate it at once. It was very global, the viewer had to come several times to fully realize what he saw. And in Dresden there is less historicism, the exposition turned out to be more humane, if I may say so, more harmonious. It seems to me that it is easier to perceive. It was important for us to find both rapprochement and opposites in our cultures of the era of romanticism. Nobody has ever done anything like this before us, ”said Lyudmila Markina, head of the painting department of the 18th – first half of the 19th century, at the Tretyakov Gallery, to RIA Novosti.
In addition to canvases, the exhibition presents archival documents and historical objects: the conductor’s baton of the outstanding German romantic composer Karl Maria von Weber, Napoleon Bonaparte’s boots during the war of 1812, the diaries of the poet Theodor Kerner and the artist Ludwig Richter.
Aesthetic and thematic references to the period of romanticism in art are revealed in the contemporary works of artists who also participate in the exhibition: Susan Philips, Matilda ter Hein, Wolfgang Tillmans, Jaan Toomik, Andrey Kuzkin and Boris Mikhailov.
For the general public, the exposition will open on Saturday 2 October and run until 6 February. The exhibition is part of the program of the Year of Germany in Russia 2020/2021, which is held under the patronage of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany, and was held, among other things, with the support of the Art, Science and Sport Charitable Foundation.
Germany says this:
.