Dreams of Freedom: Romanticism in Russia and Germany

Dreaming of freedom amid global revolution, war, and disestablishment, early nineteenth-century artists turned inward and found meaning. Many of these artists, stifled by reactionary push-back, fled to a burgeoning Romantic community in Italy, where their shared yearnings produced some of the greatest art of the century. Through opulent landscapes, German and Russian expatriates such as Caspar David Friedrich and Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov experimented with new forms of liberation, national identity, and religiosity. Lavishly illustrated with three hundred paintings from the State Tretyakov Gallery Moscow and the Albertinum of the State Art Collections Dresden, Dreams of Freedom showcases the remarkable fruit of this cultural encounter.