Prints created by Austrian, German, and Swiss artists included in this exhibition reflect the dramatic shifts in taste in the arts during a time of significant cultural and political transformation throughout the German-speaking regions of central Europe during the Romantic period. One hundred selected works reflect new trends in the arts such as the rediscovery of Gothic art, medieval sagas, and age-old fairy tales, and the rise of Romantic landscape and informal portraiture to a new place of important in the arts. Particular emphasis will be placed on the spread of artistic printmaking during an age of technical innovations (lithography, wood engraving, and steel engraving) and new trends in print distribution (albums and illustrated books, illustrated almanacs and journals, and local art society print publications), which served a growing segment of the population—the cultivated city dwellers now known as the reading public.

On view in the exhibition will be major prints by important artists of the German Romantic era such as Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840); Joseph Anton Koch (1768–1839); Carl Wilhelm Kolbe the Elder (1759–1835); Eugen Napoleon Neureuther (1806–1882); Ferdinand Olivier (1785–1841); Ludwig Richter (1803–1884); and Philipp Otto Runge (1777–1810); as well as Ludwig Emil Grimm (1790–1863), the younger brother of the famous Brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm.

Curator

John W. Ittmann, The Kathy and Ted Fernberger Curator of Prints

Location

Honickman and Berman Galleries, ground floor