Invitation to a report on the opening of the exhibition “Dreams of Freedom. Romanticism in Russia and Germany” at the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow
14 April 2021Invitation to a report on the opening of the exhibition “Dreams of Freedom. Romanticism in Russia and Germany” at the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow
“Dreams of Freedom. Romanticism in Russia and Germany” is the first exhibition to present masterpieces from Russia and Germany together, in direct relationship to one another and from a pan-European perspective. It opens up a dialogue between Romanticist art from the two countries of a kind that has never before been attempted. The exhibition of more than 300 works will first be displayed at the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow from 22 April to 8 August 2021, before arriving at the Albertinum, run by Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, in October.
The presentation takes its roots in the Crisis of the Subject at the start of the 19th century and the struggle for freedom that accompanied it. The liberalist ideas of the French Revolution swept through Europe just as Napoleon Bonaparte cast the continent under the shadow of war. The conservative governments in Russia and the German states attempted to restrict civil rights. The artists of the Romantic period responded to this time of upheaval with an artistic universe dominated by emotions and rife with revolutionary potential. Their dreams of freedom merged artistic individualism with utopian social ideologies. A new, groundbreaking understanding of art was born with a highly characteristic style discernible in its painting, composition and interpretation of classical stories from Antiquity and the Bible, as well as the most important genre of the era: landscape painting.
The common thread running through the presentation is conflict between restriction and freedom, between native and adopted countries, between inward withdrawal and emergence into a new future. Far from the restrictive lifeworlds of northern Europe, Italy became a longed-for destination where it seemed possible to live freely among like-minded people.
The exhibition revolves around the paintings of the Romantic period, including outstanding masterpieces by Caspar David Friedrich, Alexey Gavrilovich Venetsianov, Carl Gustav Carus and Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov. It is based on the holdings at the State Tretyakov Gallery and the Albertinum. The presentation is complemented by valuable pieces on loan from renowned institutions such as Hamburger Kunsthalle, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Klassik Stiftung Weimar and Kunstsammlung Chemnitz and, on the Russian side, the State Hermitage Museum and the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, in addition to the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow.
The works are accompanied by selected objects related to the lives of the artists and other historical figures, such as Carl Maria von Weber’s baton or the boots Napoleon is believed to have worn during his Russian campaign in 1812. Moscow will have its own exhibition section focusing on manuscripts and books from the time, and especially documents linked to the artistic relations between Russia and Germany. This diverse range of cultural artefacts is designed to bring the era to life for visitors.
The exhibition contains numerous links to the present day, with its no less complex politics, making it highly topical. This is reflected in selected international idioms of contemporary art, represented by Susan Philipsz, Mathilde ter Heijne, Marlene Dumas, Wolfgang Tillmans, Jaan Toomik, Andrey Kuzkin and Boris Mikhailov, which are connected to the Romantic period in terms of both aesthetics and content and clearly demonstrate why Romanticism is seen as the beginnings of Modernism.
The American architect Daniel Libeskind will be in charge of designing the exhibition, making his own statement on the 19th-century works with a contemporary architectural design. Libeskind also plans to create an outdoor installation visually linking the two buildings to house the exhibition, bringing the connection between the two sites even more strongly to the fore.
The sizeable interdisciplinary exhibition was jointly devised and developed by a team of curators from both museums. Everyone involved had an equal say in the selection of the works, the structure of the content and the joint accompanying publication brought out in German, English and Russian by the Hirmer-Verlag publishing house.
The exhibition “Dreams of Freedom. Romanticism in Russia and Germany” is part of the 2020/2021 Year of Germany in Russia programme and is funded by the German Federal Foreign Office. It is an important step in intensifying dialogue between the German and Russian museums.
Michelle Müntefering, Minister of State at the Federal Foreign Office: “This exhibition, which came about thanks to cooperation between two leading art museums from Germany and Russia, is a remarkable cultural exchange project. It offers a pictorial impression of the German-Russian dialogue that has taken place in art and society for centuries. By this means, it creates a platform for encounters between our countries with a pan-European slant. The Federal Foreign Office is funding the exhibition as part of the current Year of Germany in Russia, reflecting the particular importance of human and cultural interchange even in politically difficult times.”
Marion Ackermann, Director-General of Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden: “We are very happy to finally be able to open the exhibition at the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow following several postponements. In times when we can still only travel to a limited extent due to current Covid-19 restrictions, we hope that the Russian audience will be all the more delighted this year by their ‘guests’ from Dresden. As a truly Russian-German cooperation project on which the collaboration could not have been any closer, the exhibition is also an important indicator of the stability of cultural dialogue between Russia and Germany.”
Zelfira Tregulova, Director-General of the State Tretyakov Gallery: “The exhibition project in the State Tretyakov Gallery is a prominent event for us and sends out a particularly strong message during the current pandemic. The presentation demonstrates the similarities and differences in the two countries’ Romanticist art, showing the origins of contemporary artistic thinking, their concepts and their mindset. This grandstand view reveals that even today, we are still to some extent following in the footsteps of that era when the concept of freedom and creative individuality first came into being. In the exhibition, artistic idioms of today enter into a dialogue with those of the Romantic period, showing that they are a continuation of the concepts developed 200 years ago.”
Hilke Wagner, director of the Albertinum: “The exhibition makes it clear that, at the start of the 21st century, our society has moved on to a new stage in the social processes initiated 200 years ago: the question of the subject, how to lead a self-determined, free life and how to feel safe and secure in an adopted home still occupy us today, just as in the past, as do the threats presented by wars and the power of emancipatory movements. With his exhibition architecture, the Polish-American architect Daniel Libeskind has succeeded in making the complexity of the topics, the cracks, contradictions and current relevance, almost solid and tangible.”
Exhibition Venues:
22 April until 8 August 2021, State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow
2 October 2021 until 6 February 2022, Albertinum, Dresden
