Landscape, so Beautiful!

To say it right away: our title “Landscape, so Beautiful!” should be understood with a dash of irony…. And yet the representation of nature in art has a long history, it already exists in antiquity. In the modern sense, it begins in the late Middle Ages, on the threshold of the Renaissance. Famous is the ascent of Mont Ventoux in Provence by the writer Petrarch in 1336, who reflects himself in the perception of nature:

“And men go to marvel at the heights of the mountains, the immense floods of the sea, the broadly flowing streams, the vastness of the ocean, and the courses of the stars, and forget themselves over them.” (Confessiones X, 8)

This subjective perception of nature in an aesthetic-reflexive sense is then to be found again in the landscape representations of the Baroque, especially the Dutch-Flemish painting of the 17th century, and the Romantic period – both epochs are still of great influence today. But two developments do not permit an unreflected continuation of this tradition.

On the one hand, there is climate change, which threatens our existence: forest dieback and glacier melt, wildfires and floods shall suffice as keywords. Even if these events are rarely addressed in art, they are very much present in the consciousness of artists, particularly younger ones. They influence their work, even if it is not obvious. In our selection, a hint of this is most likely to be found in the morass of “Reduit” by Roland Boden.

The other reason is the general development of modern art: all artistic upheavals have naturally affected the representation of landscape, from the dissolution of the subject into point grids with the Pointillists or into color fields with the Expressionists, to the disintegration with the Cubists.

Finally to complete abstraction, beginning with Kandinsky and continuing through Mondrian to the American Abstract Expressionists. Finally, the Symbolists and Surrealists transformed the landscape into a mirror of the psyche.

landscape, so beautiful!

All of this is reflected in the representation of nature in the 21st century, and our exhibition is an apt example. The landscape is most naturalistic in photography, for example in the photograph of the Tempelhof airfield by Maximilian Meisse. But already his series of “Unreached Landscape” shows it just as such: the beautiful mountain sceneries are distant and unreachable – and the golden frame underlines the preciousness of this stretch of nature.

The photorealistic plant jungle of Jens Hausmann has a slightly surreal-fantastic effect, as it is similarly found in Joanna Buchowska, Grigori Dor, Florian Pelka, Janes Haid-Schmallenberg, Victoria Pidust and Marina Roca Die. This young Spanish painter even presents us a human body as “landscape” (“Lethargy II”). Gilles Roudière‘s photos also play on this keyboard with their hard chiaroscuro effects.

Midway between figuration and abstraction are the icebergs of Torben Giehler, the plant worlds of Juliette Sturlèse, “Engelberg” – a place in central Switzerland – by Nicholas Kashian, the “Pink Painting (Landscape #4)” by Doris Marten and the constructivist entity called “Pink” by Isabelle Borges.

Christine Krämer‘s entirely abstract paintings refer to a natural context only with their associative titles “Coral Sea” and “Birdland”, whereas Daniel Grüttner‘s “Azzurro” immediately suggests Italy’s charming blue skies and seas.

Most realistic in painting appears Henri Haake‘s “Sternegucker (Stargazer),” which is entirely in the tradition of Romanticism and, with its black, starless sky, also adopts its penchant for symbolism. But here, as in most of the other works, it should be clear that the somewhat euphemistic title of this show, “Landscape, So Beautiful,” is to be taken literally only with qualification….

As usual, the works shown here can also be found on the individual artists’ pages, where you can enlarge the works for detailed viewing. Henri Haake, Maximilian Meisse and Gilles Roudière have kindly provided works that are not in their portfolio. And we welcome Torben Giehler as a guest in this exhibition.