Media exhibition "CDFriedrich inspires"

It is the most famous painting of German Romanticism: "The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog". At dusk, a lone traveller gazes at a mountain landscape half obscured by fog. Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) created this iconic work around 1817 based on sketches from Saxon Switzerland. The introverted master, who spent most of his life in Dresden, loved the wild and romantic rocky landscape not far from the city. He repeatedly travelled through nature, seeking solitude and sketching rocks, mountains, trees and ruins.

In his studio, he created fascinating, metaphorical pictorial worlds, faithful in detail, free in composition and intense in effect. On the Caspar David Friedrich Trail and the Elbe Sandstone Mountains Painters' Trail, visitors can follow in his footsteps through the region and discover the mystical places that inspired him. Now, for the first time in Saxon Switzerland, there is an exhibition on the famous Romantic artist, who would have celebrated his 250th birthday in 2024.

The immersive show "CDFriedrich inspires" in the rooms of the former tourist information centre on the market square is both a multimedia memorial and a virtual gallery. With room-filling video projections, it invites visitors to encounter the painter and his work, to see the landscape through his eyes and to understand the creative process - from the sketch to the painting.

"Close your physical eye so that you can first see your picture with your mind's eye. Then bring to light what you have seen in the dark, so that it may reflect on others from the outside in," is how Caspar David Friedrich formulated his high standards for art. Seeing a landscape: For the painter, this always meant looking both outside and inside at the same time. His gaze did not stop at the empirical, but penetrated deeper, seeking the essential, the spiritual, the divine.

The show was conceived by the Dresden graduate designer Jürgen Bretschneider, with the video content produced by the Berlin graphic design agency SCHNELLE BUNTE BILDER. With two rooms and an area of around 200 square metres, the exhibition is a compact introduction to the real landscape experience that awaits visitors when hiking in the Saxon Switzerland National Park region.