Little Art Stories 29.03

Romanticism. 

Caspar David Friedrich, Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer (Wanderer above the Sea of Fog), 1817

Romanticism is part of our everyday language, we regularly use it to describe a feeling, an attention we receive, or a state of mind. But it is much more than a love impulse. Romanticism is an artistic movement that originated in Germany in the 18th century and spread to the rest of Europe throughout the 19th century.

In painting, theatre and literature, the Romantic movement was in opposition to the realist and rational movements. Romanticism in art is not the expression of love between two people, it is a movement on its own with its own codes, artistic works that allowed to reflect and accompany the transformations of European societies of the 18th and 19th centuries.

The Romantic artists are fascinated by freedom and seek to free themselves from the rules, so they will change the codes and propose a new interpretation of the world surrounding them. They turned to dreams, to more abstract lines, and gave a predominant place to nature and the endless horizons. Romanticism is not only the poetic escape of the mind, it is also about letting the feelings going free to express them as they are and not how the society would like them to be.

Feelings that are expressed more freely, offering a new palette of colours. Romanticism does not only express love, but also melancholy, nostalgia, sadness, joy, drama. All emotions have their place and each one takes on a colour, a trait of its own according to the artist’s hand.

Romanticism is also the period of poetry and theatre, feelings are drawn, written, sung and played.

An artistic romanticism that is much broader than what we call romanticism today.

One of the emblematic works of this movement is Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, from 1817 by the artist Caspar David Friedrich (German).

This work is a perfect example of what Romanticism brought to the art movement and how it transformed it. A solitary man viewed from his back looking at sea of fogs, a distant horizon, the sky and the earth overlapping among the mountains, a contrast of black and white increasing the feeling of vertigo. What is he doing? What is he observing? This painting calls for calm, tranquillity, solitude, but also for questioning and curiosity. A melancholy, an uncertainty about the place, about the person, about the topic.

Romanticism means leaving room for emotions and imagination so that everyone can immerse themselves in their own interpretation and introspection.