Exhibitions

It’s a compelling classic: In Caspar David Friedrich’s The Wanderer Above the Fog (1818), a lone man on a rock gazes out over range of mountains half-blanketed in fog, his back to the viewer. His hair is tousled, he’s sharply dressed with a cane. Situated dead-center in the picture plane, the figure stands in sharp contrast to the sky and its gentle grays and whites. He’s a solitary soul contemplating the power and beauty of nature: in it, but not of it.
The painting is arguably the artist’s most famous work, a cornerstone of German Romanticism. Yet humans’ place in nature has ensnared artists since time immemorial—and a new show positions Friedrich’s timeless investigations alongside contemporary artists and his contemporaries. The major exhibition, which commemorates the 250th anniversary of Friedrich’s birth year, finds a particular relevance among today’s compounding environmental emergencies.
On view until April 1, 2024, the Hamburger Kunsthalle’s sweeping retrospective “Caspar David Friedrich: Art for a New Age”  features 70 well-known paintings and more than of his 100 drawings by the 19th century artist alongside about 20 additional pieces by his contemporaries, including even his brother Christian (Boy Sleeping on a Grave, (1802). A second section dedicates itself to 20th and 21st century artists—among them Julian Charriere, Susan Schuppli, and Nina K. Jurk—whose work connects with Friedrich or embodies aspects of the humanity’s complex relationships with the natural world.
Julian Charriere The Blue Fossil Entropic Stories III (2013). Courtesy DITTRICH & SCHLECHTRIEM, Berlin © Julian Charrière / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023
Friedrich’s landscapes and remote protagonists highlighted a shifting connection to nature when he created them in the early 19th century as the Industrial Revolution was rapidly gaining traction, but the artist’s work has passed through many “new ages” since. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, he was rediscovered and canonized as a Romantic (by the time he died in Dresden in 1840, he’d fallen from visibility). A few decades later, the movers and shakers of the Third Reich saw his work as the epitome of German-ness (unlike other painters of his era, he stayed at home in northern Germany, rather than decamping to Italy). It took until 1974 for that nationalist association to wear off: that year, his work was widely shown in Hamburg and Dresden, each on a respective side of a divided Germany. Now, in yet another new age of global climate panic, his landscape paintings and nature studies take on a different urgency.
The show opens with early self-portraits—in one, from around 1800 and done in black chalk on paper, he looks coquettishly at the viewer. Subsequent rooms move from topic to topic: Gathered in one space are Friedrich’s drawn studies of trees, thistles, rocks, leaves, and clouds, all rendered in meticulous detail. One room is all about ice: Near his The Sea of Ice (1823–24)—an aggressive painting of jagged shards of breaking river ice consuming a capsizing ship—are smaller color studies of ice fragments. Another gallery focusses entirely on Friedrichs’ paintings of ruins set in lush forests.
The artist’s greatest hits are also here in all their glory: Ice and Wanderer, of course, but also The Monk by the Sea (1808-10) which shows a lone, cloaked monk on a beach contemplating turbulent skies and water. Chalk Cliffs on Rügen (1818) frame a multicolored sea with brilliant white cliffs. Mountain Landscape with Rainbow (1809-10) sees a glimmering rainbow cut across the dark heavens. In Friedrichs’ later works human figures become scarcer and the land and sky’s undulating colors more prominent.
Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) Das Eismeer, (1823/24). Hamburger Kunsthalle. © Hamburger Kunsthalle/bpk. Foto: Elke Walford
The show’s contemporary section, consisting of the work of 21 artists, does a daring long jump into the present, but it’s where Friedrich’s ongoing inspiration unfolds and begins to take on new meanings. Swaantje Güntzel riffs on Friedrich by having herself photographed from the back in a series of images (Arctic Joghurt, 2. Dezember 2021) in which she throws a plastic yogurt cup into a Norwegian fjord.
Hiroyuki Masuyama’s photomontages in LED boxes are high-tech “copies” of several of Friedrich’s hits, and Olafur Eliasson’s Color Experiment no. 86, (2019), a large disc in gradated light colors, uses the exact hues in The Sea of Ice. The lush forest in David Claerbout’s Wildfire (meditation on fire) (2019/20)—a vast light box showing a computer-generated forest fire—mirror the dense foliage of Friedrich’s paintings, but here, the trees slowly burn.
David Claerbout Wildfire (meditation on fire), (2019–2020). In collaboration with Musea Brugge, courtesy of the artist and Kunstmuseum Bonn, Dauerleihgabe der KiCo Collection Bonn. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023
The show closes with works by Kehinde Wiley: In one of two oversize paintings (The Prelude (Babacar Mené), 2021), a contemporary “wanderer” again overlooks the sky, fog, and a mountain landscape from a rocky crag; this Black figure, recalling Friedrich’s seminal work (he holds two canes), is turned just a little toward the viewer.
But it’s in Wiley’s six-channel video The Prelude (2021) that we finally see faces. Black figures wander through a snowy mountain landscape; some wear furs, others are shirtless and shivering. There’s lush music, a narration taken from William Wordsworth’s autobiographical poem “The Prelude,” and often, the protagonists stare straight into the camera.
Only here in Wiley’s art does humanity, not nature, take the central role. Beyond the artist’s ongoing disruption of art’s Eurocentric canon and his reference to colonialism’s ravages, the works seem to demand us to take responsibility for the ailing world surrounding us, so that everyone and everything can survive, and maybe even thrive.
“Caspar David Friedrich: Art for a New Age” is on view until April 1, 2024, at the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Hamburg. Additional exhibitions celebrating Caspar David Friedrich will run throughout 2024 in Berlin and Dresden.
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Amid the vaulted ceilings and marble floors of the interior of Vienna’s Albertina Museum, slashes of vibrant color in every possible hue explode across the monochrome white walls. The chromatic intervention is courtesy of artist Katharina Grosse, whose contemporary artworks push the boundaries of form— collapsing structures, traversing corners and edges, spilling from wall to floor in exuberant motion. Wielding a compressorized airbrush allows the artist to achieve unparalleled force and dynamism, electrifying the staid white cube.
Installation view, “Katharina Grosse: Why Three Tones Do Not Form a Triangle.” Photo: Sandro E.E. Zanzinger Photographie, courtesy of the Albertina Museum.
In an exclusive interview filmed as part of Art21’s Extended Play series back in 2015, Grosse explained the genesis of her practice, which has vaunted her to become one of the most respected artists of the 21st century.
“Interestingly enough,” the artist said wryly, “color is an element in painting that has always been discussed… as the female, less stable, less clear, and not so intelligent element… whereas the concept—the line, the drawing—is more the male, the clear, the progressive, and intelligent part of the artwork.” Of course, Grosse utilizes color to create a concept, as she noted, “in relationship to the crystallized and built and materialized world that is part of what I do when I paint in space.” 
Many of the artist’s interventions at museums, including the current exhibition at the Albertina, are site-specific and only last for the duration of the show. They become the space, transforming it entirely. “All the different actions go together on one surface,” she explained, “so it’s little bit like violence in a movie, which kind of accelerates and compresses time.”

Watch the video, which originally appeared as part of Art21’s series Extended Play, below. “Katharina GrosseWhy Three Tones Do Not Form a Triangle” is on view at the Albertina through April 1, 2024. 
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This is an installment of “Art on Video,” a collaboration between Artnet News and Art21 that brings you clips of news-making artists. A new season of the nonprofit Art21’s flagship series Art in the Twenty-First Century is available now on PBS. Catch all episodes of other series, like New York Close Up and Extended Play, and learn about the organization’s educational programs at Art21.org.
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A new series of large-scale abstract paintings by Gregor Gleiwitz at Setareh gallery in Düsseldorf are inspired by the natural world, which may not seem obvious at first glance. The works are filled with whirling organic forms, but these contain a frenetic expressivity and vibrant palette that feels entirely hyperreal. Rather than reflecting the world back at us, Gleiwitz has succeeded in capturing the unpredictable, all-enveloping tenor of our emotional responses to it.
Born in Poland in 1977, Gleiwitz currently lives and works in Berlin. He recalled venturing out for long walks in the fields near his studio to make watercolor studies en plein air, which left him inspired by how the sun’s rays bring lightness and, with it, meaning to our lives. “The canvas is the light space in which the experienced world takes on a new form as a result of the stream of consciousness,” he said.
Gregor Gleiwitz in his studio. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Each painting is an impression that belongs to a particular day, which is why Gleiwitz gives as each work’s title its date of completion. “Seeing is wandering, landscape is figure, and the picture is a portrait,” he said. “Searching anew every day, following the sun inside and out.”
By layering glossy paint that Gleiwitz then freely scrapes, smears, and swirls across the canvas with a palette knife, he is able to achieve a pleasingly lyrical effect that is alternately enlivening and lulling. In this way, he foregrounds how our experiences of the external world are always mediated by our senses. This offers an interesting twist on the return to the pleasures of whimsical, floral art in contemporary art, which has felt very of the zeitgeist in recent months.
“Within a German painting tradition which has grown out of the accomplishments of masters from Gerhard Richter through Albert Oehlen, Gregor Gleiwitz has developed a distinct oeuvre of near abstraction,” said Lee Plested, director of the gallery. “Incorporating the mystical dimensions of the expressive, Gleiwitz is able to push beyond the literal image to realize planes of encounter which resonate in multiple dimensions and temporalities while maintaining the underlying presence of their physical origins.”
“Sun Script” is on view at Setareh gallery in Düsseldorf and online through January 20. Check out more paintings from the show below. His work will also be included in “Nature Studies,” a forthcoming two person exhibition with Miron Schmückle at the gallery’s Berlin location from February 8 until Mary 9, 2024.
Gregor Gleiwitz, 08.10.2023 (2023). Image courtesy of Setareh Gallery, Berlin.
Gregor Gleiwitz, 06.09.2023 (2023). Image courtesy of Setareh Gallery, Berlin.
Gregor Gleiwitz, 17.08.2023 (2023). Image courtesy of Setareh Gallery, Berlin.
Gregor Gleiwitz, 25.07.2023 (2023). Image courtesy of Setareh Gallery, Berlin.
Gregor Gleiwitz, 16.05.2023 (2023). Image courtesy of Setareh Gallery, Berlin.

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In the two years that Curt Bloch spent hiding from the Nazis in the attic of a house in the Netherlands, he launched a weekly satirical magazine filled with photomontages and poems about his own experiences, as well as wider political developments in the outside world. All 95 issues of Het Onderwater Cabaret (The Underwater Cabaret) will be the subject of a free exhibition at the Jewish Museum Berlin from February 9 through May 26, 2024.
The Dutch term onderwater translates to underwater, but is also often used to mean that someone has gone into hiding. The handmade publication took aim at the Nazis, in particular Joseph Goebbels. In one poem about the notorious propagandist, he advised: “If he writes straight, read it crooked. If he writes crooked, read it straight.”
Curt Bloch. Photo: Jewish Museum Berlin, gift of Lide Schattenkerk.
“The overwhelming majority of writings that were created in hiding were destroyed,” the exhibition’s curator Aubrey Pomerance told the New York Times. “If they weren’t, they’ve come to the public attention before now. So, it’s tremendously exciting.”
Born in the western German city of Dortmund in 1908, Bloch’s was working as a legal clerk before his life changed forever at the age of 24. A sharp rise in antisemitism after Hitler came to power in 1933 forced Bloch to flee across the northern border into the Netherlands. In 1940, the Nazis invaded and Bloch moved to the small city of Enschede near the German border.
Curt Bloch, Het Onderwater Cabaret, Magazine cover from 16.09.1945. Het Onderwater Cabaret 30 Aug 1943; Jewish Museum Berlin, Convolute/816, Curt Bloch collection, loaned by the Charities Aid Foundation America thanks to the generous support of Curt Blochʼs family.
Bloch would escape deportation thanks to the heroic efforts of Leendert Overduin, a pastor for the Dutch Reformed Church who set up Group Overduin to help at least 1,000 Jewish people hide from the Nazis. In April 1943, the organization installed Bloch in the home of a couple, Bertus and Aleida Menneken, and he shared their tiny attic with another German-Jewish couple, Bruno Löwenberg and Karola Wolf. Group Overduin would continue to protect Bloch and his companions, supplying them with food and, unusually, the printed materials, glue, pens, and paper necessary to run his publication.
Curt Bloch, Het Onderwater Cabaret, Magazine cover from 30.08.1945. Het Onderwater Cabaret 30 Aug 1943; Jewish Museum Berlin, Convolute/816, Curt Bloch collection, loaned by the Charities Aid Foundation America thanks to the generous support of Curt Blochʼs family.
Though Bloch made one copy of each issue of Het Onderwater Cabaret, these were small enough to slip into a pocket and were passed around, possibly to other members of Group Overduin. Luckily, all 95 booklets were eventually returned and Bloch was able to take them home after the liberation in 1945. He soon met fellow Holocaust survivor Ruth Kan, and the couple emigrated to New York where they set up a business selling European antiques.
Curt Bloch, Het Onderwater Cabaret, Magazine cover from 18.12.1945. Het Onderwater Cabaret 30 Aug 1943; Jewish Museum Berlin, Convolute/816, Curt Bloch collection, loaned by the Charities Aid Foundation America thanks to the generous support of Curt Blochʼs family.
Meanwhile, the magazines remained family heirlooms collecting dust on a shelf until Bloch’s granddaughter Lucy decided to make them the subject of her own research. Her efforts to promote the magazine would lead to the forthcoming exhibition, “‘My Verses Are Like Dynamite’: Curt Bloch’s Het Onderwater Cabaret,” in Berlin and an accompanying book The Underwater Cabaret: The Satirical Resistance of Curt Bloch by Gerard Groeneveld. German, Dutch and English versions of Bloch’s poems will also be made available online on a dedicated website launched by Bloch’s daughter Simone Bloch.

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The great Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli is best known for painted works such as Primavera (c. 1477–82) and The Birth of Venus (c. 1485–86), which hang in Florence’s Uffizi Gallery, but a new show at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor, one of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, celebrates the artist’s drawings. “Botticelli: Rhythm of the Line” is the first-ever exhibition dedicated to his works in the medium.
The exhibition includes more than 60 artworks from 42 institutions, with 27 drawings on display. They come from institutions like the Uffizi as well as Paris’s Louvre Museum and the National Gallery in London. Many of these works rarely travel, and they temporarily turn the Bay Area into a remarkable showcase for the Renaissance master’s output.
Botticelli—born Alessandro Filipepi in 1445—ran his own large workshop in Florence after studying under the master Fra Filippo Lippi from around the age of 15. After his training, Botticelli developed a style which harked back to the artistic ideals of classical antiquity, and he is known for his individualized portraits. His group portraits often included real contemporary figures and self-portraits, the most famous of which can be seen in his The Adoration of the Magi (c. 1475).
In a short documentary produced by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Furio Rinaldi, the exhibition’s curator, explains the appeal of drawings as a route to a more intimate understanding of the Old Masters: “Most of these Old Masters are perceived as very remote and unapproachable, but through their drawings we can have a much more direct and fresh understanding on how they were thinking, how they were designing, how they were articulating their memorable compositions.”
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The exhibition examines the role preparatory drawing played in Botticelli’s practice, and pairs completed works with the initial drawings for them. His world-renowned Adoration of the Magi hangs alongside fragments of preparatory drawings on linen.
The exhibition also features works recently attributed to the Italian Renaissance master. These include preparatory drawings for The Cestello Annunciation (1489), from the Uffizi Gallery; Adoration of the Magi from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist (c. 1468–70), from the Louvre Museum. The Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist is hung next to the newly attributed drawing.
Rinaldi has said that the new attributions “will help lay the groundwork for a fuller understanding of Botticelli’s artistic output and the field of Italian Renaissance art at large.”
“Botticelli: Rhythm of the Line” is on view at the Legion of Honor, 100 34th Avenue, San Francisco, through February 11, 2024. See more works from the show below.
Sandro Botticelli, La Bella Simonetta (ca. 1485). Photo courtesy of Ashmolean Museum.
Installation view of “Botticelli: Rhythm of the Line” at Legion of Honor, San Francisco. Photo by Gary Sexton, courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Installation view of “Botticelli: Rhythm of the Line” at Legion of Honor, San Francisco. Photo by Gary Sexton, courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Sandro Botticelli, Fragment of Adoration of the Magi (ca. 1500). Photo courtesy of Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge / Art Resource, NY.
Sandro Botticelli, The Devout Jews at Pentecost (ca. 1505). Photo by Wolfgang Fuhrmannek, courtesy of Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt.
Sandro Botticelli, The Annunciation (ca. 1490–95). Courtesy Glasgow Museums.
Sandro Botticelli, The Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist (Madonna of the Rose Garden) (ca. 1468). © RMN-Grand Palais. Photo Tony Querrec.
Installation view of “Botticelli: Rhythm of the Line” at Legion of Honor, San Francisco. Photo by Drew Altizer, courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

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Nicole Eisenman’s first major retrospective in the U.K., at London’s Whitechapel Gallery, contains over 100 works spanning some 30 years, although its impressive scope feels even wider, stretching across the history of art. Take a painting like Coping (2008), which is filled with individual vignettes in a manner reminiscent of Breughel, or Fishing (2000), where the symmetrical composition and arrangement of figures calls to mind a High Renaissance altarpiece. Elsewhere, Sloppy Bar Room Kiss (2011) has the same painterly, expressionistic approach to everyday modern life that was popularized by artists of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Brooklyn-based French-American painter and sculptor is adverse to giving interviews or offering any kind of oversimplifying explanations for these scenes, which can often be monumental in size and littered with references. What comes through clearly enough in the work, however, is her boldly biting yet always humorous critiques of contemporary socio-political issues including identity, war, economic downturn, and technology.
Throughout the show are scenes that celebrate lesbian life and love in downtown bars, parks, pools and domestic settings, but even a moment of intimacy shared in a work like Morning Studio (2016) contains a darker undercurrent. Eisenman uses a prominent computer screen to draw attention to the ways in which the prevalence of technology interferes with our everyday lives. She may often quote the past, but Eisenman’s keen observational eye always pulls these references back into the present.
Sculptural heads highly typical of Eisenman’s practice appear throughout the show, often appearing in large assortments of jumbled objects. Site-specific murals made by the artist between 1992 and 2003, but since destroyed, have also been revived for the first time thanks to a new animation film produced in collaboration with fellow artist Ryan McNamara.
“Nicole Eisenman: What Happened” runs through January 14, 2024. Check out more works from the show below.
Installation view of “Nicole Eisenman: What Happened” at Whitechapel Gallery in London closing January 14, 2024. Photo: Damian Griffiths, courtesy of Whitechapel Gallery.
Nicole Eisenman, Beer Garden with Ulrike and Celeste (2009). Photo: Bryan Conley, courtesy Hall Art Foundation.
Installation view of “Nicole Eisenman: What Happened” at Whitechapel Gallery in London closing January 14, 2024. Photo: Damian Griffiths, courtesy of Whitechapel Gallery.
Nicole Eisenman, Sloppy Bar Room Kiss (2011). Photo: Robert Wedemeyer, courtesy of the artist and Vielmetter Los Angeles.
Installation view of “Nicole Eisenman: What Happened” at Whitechapel Gallery in London closing January 14, 2024. Photo: Damian Griffiths, courtesy of Whitechapel Gallery.
Nicole Eisenman, Econ Prof (2019). Photo courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
Installation view of “Nicole Eisenman: What Happened” at Whitechapel Gallery in London closing January 14, 2024. Photo: Damian Griffiths, courtesy of Whitechapel Gallery.
Nicole Eisenmann, Morning Studio (2016). Photo courtesy the artist and Anton Kern Gallery, New York.
Installation view of “Nicole Eisenman: What Happened” at Whitechapel Gallery in London closing January 14, 2024. Photo: Damian Griffiths, courtesy of Whitechapel Gallery.
Nicole Eisenman, Fishing (2000). Photo: Bryan Conley, courtesy Carnegie Museum of Art.
Installation view of “Nicole Eisenman: What Happened” at Whitechapel Gallery in London closing January 14, 2024. Photo: Damian Griffiths, courtesy of Whitechapel Gallery.
Nicole Eisenman, Coping (2008). Photo courtesy Whitechapel Gallery.
Installation view of “Nicole Eisenman: What Happened” at Whitechapel Gallery in London closing January 14, 2024. Photo: Damian Griffiths, courtesy of Whitechapel Gallery.

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